Appeal 2007-2680
Application 10/756,352
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, 127 S. Ct. at 1740, 82 USPQ2d at 1396. Often, it will be
necessary for a Court to look to 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. To facilitate review, this analysis should be made
explicit. Id., citing In re Kahn, 441 F.3d 977, 988, 78 USPQ2d 1329,
1336-37 (Fed. Cir. 2006).
From the foregoing, design incentives to form a clear aperture and a
peripheral coating with a sharp border on an optical element, would have
prompted one of ordinary skill in the art, seeking to form Bauer’s optical
element with Bauer’s peripheral UV absorbing coating, to look in either the
same field of endeavor or different one. KSR, 127 S. Ct. at 1740, 82
USPQ2d at 1396. In the present case, one of ordinary skill would have been
prompted to look to Kato’s and Daniels’ disclosures for relevant coating
techniques to achieve the above stated goals in forming the peripheral
coating on Bauer’s optical element. Kato and Daniels disclose techniques to
form a coating on an optical element having a more sharply defined border
and to prevent coating the aperture of the optical element (Daniels, col. 1, ll.
64-68; Kato ¶ [0064]).
Moreover, there is nothing unpredictable in the combination of
Daniels’ coating techniques to produce a more sharply defined border and
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