Appeal No. 95-1959
Application 07/894,128
would have been prima facie obvious to a person of ordinary
skill in the art at the time appellants' invention was made.
Moreover, upon reconsidering the prima facie case anew in
light of all the evidence, including appellants' rebuttal
evidence, we also agree with the examiner that the rebuttal
evidence is inadequate to overcome the prima facie case of
obviousness.
As we stated above, appellants have not argued that
the prior art of record fails to disclose the active catalyst
ingredients of the claims. That is, we find the combination
of a "complex compound of metals in Sub-groups IV and V of the
Periodic Table and an oligomeric alumoxan (sic) compound" to
be notoriously well-known catalysts for the polymerization and
copolymerization of olefins. Indeed, appellants have conceded
as much at page 3 of their main brief in their discussion of
what Welborn does and does not disclose and, again, at pages 6
and 7 in discussing the metal complexes applied to the
substrate. Thus, the narrow question before us is whether or
not it can be fairly said that the prior art relied on teaches
or suggests using the well-known prior art catalysts on a
support comprising "finely divided polypropylene". We find
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