Ex Parte Remboski et al - Page 8


                Appeal 2007-1047                                                                               
                Application 09/944,892                                                                         
                necessary under our case law nor consistent with it.”  KSR Int’l Co. v.                        
                Teleflex Inc., 127 S. Ct. at 1742-43, 82 USPQ2d at 1397.  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.                   
                      In the instant case, we have found supra that Matsuda teaches an                         
                active network in a vehicle.  We further conclude that the proffered                           
                modification of Matsuda’s network with Bertin’s reserved network                               
                connections would have been a predictable variation to a person of ordinary                    
                skill in the art having common sense at the time of the invention.  We                         
                acknowledge that Bertin is not directed to active networks in a vehicle.                       
                However, Bertin must be read, not in isolation, but for what it fairly teaches                 
                in combination with the prior art as a whole. 3   In particular, we agree with                 
                the Examiner that the features of reserving communication capacity                             
                bandwidth, reconfiguring network bandwidth in response to overcapacity,                        
                under-capacity, and failure, are notoriously well known in the data                            
                                                                                                              
                3 See In re Merck & Co., Inc., 800 F.2d 1091, 1097, 231 USPQ 375, 380                          
                (Fed. Cir. 1986) (One cannot show nonobviousness by attacking references                       
                individually where the rejections are based on combinations of references).                    

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