Appeal 2007-1963
Application 10/121,226
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, 127 S. Ct. at 1740.
This reasoning is applicable here. We do not agree with Appellants’
assertion that the Examiner has impermissibly engaged in hindsight in
formulating the rejection. In contrast, we find the Examiner’s proffered
combination of Veliadis and Hoyt reasonably teaches and/or suggests
Appellants’ claimed invention in terms of familiar elements that would have
been combined by an artisan having common sense using known methods to
achieve a predictable result. We note that Hoyt’s vehicle (i.e., satellite) was
within the Earth’s atmosphere at launch time and, further, does not operate
exclusively outside the Earth’s atmosphere.1 While it is true that Veliadis
and Hoyt rely upon different ambient Earth fields for power generation, we
nevertheless find important similarities between the two references, such as
the common use of a conductive probe, and the use of heat as a catalyst for
electron emission, as discussed supra. We find that modifying Veliadis by
applying the conductive probe concept to a vehicle for power generation
purposes (as taught by Hoyt) would have yielded a predictable result to an
1 See Hoyt at column 6, lines 24-26: “Current is obtained from the
ionosphere with collection and emission occurring on opposite ends of the
tether [emphasis added].”
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