Appeal No. 2006-0790
Reexamination Control No. 90/005,117
combine the teachings of Damark and Teague so as to arrive at a
treadmill encompassed by appealed claim 1. Specifically, we
hold that one of ordinary skill in the art would have found the
requisite motivation, suggestion, or teaching in the prior art
5 to provide Teague’s counterbalancing mechanism including gas
springs 56 in the treadmill described in Damark in order to
obtain all of the advantages described in Teague. In light of
the prior art teachings as a whole, a person having ordinary
skill in the art would have had a reasonable expectation that
10 incorporation of Teague’s counterbalancing mechanism in the
treadmill described in Damark, which opens in use and closes in
storage in a manner similar to that described for Teague’s bed,
would decrease the lifting moment required to store the
treadmill while ensuring that the tread base is stably retained
15 in the storage position.
We appreciate that Teague discloses the use of the
counterbalancing mechanism in a bed rather than a treadmill as
in Damark. This fact alone, however, does not preclude a
determination that a person having ordinary skill in the art
20 would have combined the teachings of the two references. Two
tests for determining whether a prior art reference is analogous
are as follows: (1) whether the art is from the same field of
21
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