Appeal No. 2006-0128
Application No. 10/003,353
of a worker in the art to select such well known lightweight and strong door panels for
use in Kennedy based on the fact that they provide the strength and durability of steel at
a very low cost. See, particularly, pages 5 and 6 of the examiner’s answer.
Appellants’ contention (brief, page 8) that Zen fails to discuss the weight and
strength properties of the insulation and panels therein and therefore does not provide
“substantial evidence” to support the examiner’s rejection, is not well founded. In our
view, it would have been readily apparent to one of ordinary skill in the art from a
reading of Zen that the steel clad door (1) therein would be strong and rigid, while at the
same time being relatively lightweight, fire-resistant, and inexpensive to manufacture.
Thus, given the teachings of Zen and the requirements in Kennedy for a door system
that is lightweight, yet sturdy and resistant to flexure (col. 1, lines 34-36), we agree with
the examiner that a steel clad door like that taught in Zen would have been an obvious
selection for one of ordinary skill in the art to have made for use in the mine door
system of Kennedy.
In making the arguments bridging pages 6-9 of the brief, appellants seem to have
lost sight of the fact that the test for obviousness is not whether the features of a
secondary reference may be bodily incorporated into the structure of the primary
reference, nor is it that the claimed invention must be expressly suggested in any one or
all of the references. Rather, the test is what the combined teachings of the references
5
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007