Appeal 2007-0990
Application 09/871,920
USPQ 459, 467 (1966). Furthermore, “‘there must be some articulated
reasoning with some rational underpinning to support the legal conclusion of
obviousness’ . . . [H]owever, the analysis need not seek out precise
teachings directed to the specific subject matter of the challenged claim, for
a court can take account of the inferences and creative steps that a person of
ordinary skill in the art would employ.” KSR Int’l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 127
S. Ct. 1727, 1741, 82 USPQ2d 1385, 1396 (2007) (quoting In re Kahn, 441
F.3d 977, 988, 78 USPQ2d 1329, 1336 (Fed. Cir. 2006)). In KSR, The
Supreme Court further stated:
When a work is available in one field of endeavor, design
incentives and other market forces can prompt variations
of it, either in the same field or a different one. If a
person of ordinary skill can implement a predictable
variation, § 103 likely bars its patentability. For the same
reason, if a technique has been used to improve one
device, and a person of ordinary skill in the art would
recognize that it would improve similar
devices in the same way, using the technique is obvious
unless its actual application is beyond his or her skill.
KSR Int’l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 127 S. Ct. at 1740, 82 USPQ2d at 1396.
This reasoning is applicable here. We note that Ivanov teaches
approving documents using a tiered review process (col. 8, ll. 34-48).
Klibaner teaches publication of a document to a website, upon approval by
multiple parties (pp. 2-3, ¶ 26; see also p. 8, ¶ 48). Therefore, we conclude
it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art that
modifying Ivanov with the teachings of Klibaner would have resulted in a
predictable variation of Ivanov, i.e., a combined system where a document is
approved by multiple parties via a tiered review process before publication
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