Appeal 2007-2596
Application 10/370,634
(1976)). The Court also stated that it is obvious to choose from among
known equivalents:
When there is a design need or market pressure to solve a
problem and there are a finite number of identified, predictable
solutions, a person of ordinary skill has good reason to pursue
the known options within his or her technical grasp. If this
leads to the anticipated success, it is likely the product not of
innovation but of ordinary skill and common sense. In that
instance the fact that a combination was obvious to try might
show that is was obvious under § 103.
Id. at 1742.
In the instant case, having been advised by Hunter that carbon steel
was useful for making pre-tensioning tendons, one of ordinary skill would
have reasoned that stainless steel would be equivalently useful for the same
purpose. We therefore conclude that the claimed use of stainless steel
tendons in post-tensioned concrete structures would have been obvious to
one of ordinary skill at the time the invention was made.
Hunter also does not appear to disclose post-tensioning adjacent
concrete members, as recited in claims 16 and 22. However, being informed
by Hunter that compressing concrete slabs with anchored tendons reinforces
the slabs, one of ordinary skill would have reasoned that compressing
“stacks” of adjacent slabs would reinforce all of the compressed members.
We therefore conclude that using post-tensioning to reinforce adjacent
concrete members in the manner recited in claims 16 and 22 would have
been obvious to one of ordinary skill at the time the invention was made.
We therefore conclude that one of ordinary skill would have
considered claims 1, 2, 7, and 13-23 obvious over Hunter.
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