"Teaching away" in In re Baker

From the BPAI decision of In re Baker

“‘A reference may be said to teach away when a person of ordinary skill, upon reading the reference, would be discouraged from following the path set out in the reference, or would be led in a direction divergent from the path that was taken by the applicant.’” Ricoh Co., Ltd. v. Quanta Computer, Inc., 550 F.3d 1325, 1332 (Fed. Cir. 2008) (quoting In re Kahn, 441 F.3d 977, 990 (Fed. Cir. 2006)). Here, Crowther teaches away from the claimed limitation wherein an exclusive media type, such as voice calls, may be interrupted by other non-exclusive media type contacts, such as e-mails. Crowther specifically teaches that “[t]he highest level of interruptibility is defined as level 1 [i.e., the claimed exclusive media type], meaning that requests being handled by agents from skillsets at this level cannot be interrupted by requests at lower level of interruptibility [i.e., the claimed non-exclusive media type].”