Appeal 2007-1792
Application 10/050,834
interrelated teachings of multiple patents; the effects of
demands known to the design community or present in
the marketplace; and the background knowledge
possessed by a person having ordinary skill in the art, all
in order to determine whether there was an apparent
reason to combine the known elements in the fashion
claimed by the patent at issue.
Id. at 1740-41, 82 USPQ2d at 1396. The Court noted that “[t]o facilitate review,
this analysis should be made explicit.” Id. (citing In re Kahn, 441 F.3d 977, 988,
78 USPQ2d 1329, 1336 (Fed. Cir. 2006) (“[R]ejections on obviousness grounds
cannot be sustained by mere conclusory statements; instead, there must be some
articulated reasoning with some rational underpinning to support the legal
conclusion of obviousness”)). However, “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.” Id.
The Federal Circuit recently concluded that it would have been obvious to
combine (1) a mechanical device for actuating a phonograph to play back sounds
associated with a letter in a word on a puzzle piece with (2) an electronic,
processor-driven device capable of playing the sound associated with a first letter
of a word in a book. Leapfrog Ent., Inc. v. Fisher-Price, Inc., 485 F.3d 1157,
1161, 82 USPQ2d 1687, 1690-91 (Fed. Cir. 2007) (“[a]ccommodating a prior art
mechanical device that accomplishes [a desired] goal to modern electronics would
have been reasonably obvious to one of ordinary skill in designing children’s
learning devices”). In reaching that conclusion, the Federal Circuit recognized that
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