Appeal No. 2006-1554 Page 10
Application No. 10/369,819
factor may not be present, and one or more factors may
predominate. Id. at 962-63, 1 USPQ2d at 1201.
In re GPAC, 57 F.3d 1573, 1579, 35 USPQ2d 1116, 1121 (Fed. Cir. 1995). In this
case, we find that a person of ordinary skill in the art would have been familiar
with the practice of locating push buttons on the normally hidden bottom surface of
a computer device to avoid inadvertent actuation of a button. We also find that a
person of ordinary skill in the art would have been familiar with the use of a push
button to remove the side panel of a computer casing, as taught by Hrehor.
We further find that there was a sufficient “teaching, suggestion, or
motivation” to modify or combine the prior art teachings that would have led to the
invention. See Dystar Textilfarben GmbH v. C.H. Patrick Co., 464 F.3d 1356,
1367, 80 USPQ2d 1641, 1650 (Fed. Cir. 2006) (“Our suggestion test . . . requires .
. . consideration of common knowledge and common sense.”) (citations omitted).
[T]he “motivation-suggestion-teaching” test asks not
merely what the references disclose, but whether a person
of ordinary skill in the art, possessed with the
understandings and knowledge reflected in the prior art,
and motivated by the general problem facing the
inventor, would have been led to make the combination
recited in the claims. From this it may be determined
whether the overall disclosures, teachings, and
suggestions of the prior art, and the level of skill in the
art – i.e., the understandings and knowledge of persons
having ordinary skill in the art at the time of the
invention-support the legal conclusion of obviousness.
In re Kahn, 441 F.3d 977, 988, 78 USPQ2d 1329, 1337 (Fed. Cir. 2006) (internal
citations omitted).
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