Appeal No. 2006-0790
Reexamination Control No. 90/005,117
1615. The claims were rejected as obvious over conventional
trash bags in view of two references: one describing “how to
teach children to make a ‘Crepe Paper Jack-O-Lantern’ out of a
strip of orange crepe paper, construction paper cut-outs in the
5 shape of facial features, and ‘wadded newspapers’ as filling”;
and another “describing a method of making a ‘paper bag pumpkin’
by stuffing a bag with newspapers, painting it orange, and then
painting on facial features with black paint.” In re Dembiczak,
175 F.3d at 997-998, 50 USPQ2d at 1615-1616. The court reversed
10 because there was no identification of any suggestion, teaching
or motivation to combine the references or “specific--or even
inferential--findings concerning the identification of the
relevant art, the level of ordinary skill in the art, the nature
of the problem to be solved, or any other factual findings that
15 might serve to support a proper obviousness analysis.” In re
Dembiczak, 175 F.3d at 1000, 50 USPQ2d at 1618.
In contrast to In re Dembiczak, Teague provides the
requisite motivation, suggestion, or teaching for one of
ordinary skill in the art to combine the references and thus
20 arrive at a treadmill encompassed by appealed claim 1. As we
discussed above, Teague teaches that a particular
counterbalancing mechanism including gas springs decreases the
26
Page: Previous 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007