Appeal No. 95-3734
Application No. 08/043,620
claimed product. Specifically, according to the examiner, the
PTO can require appellants to prove that the prior art products
do not necessarily or inherently possess the physical property
"dispersible in a solvent" recited in the appealed claims. With
this line of reasoning, the examiner rejects all of the appealed
claims concurrently for anticipation by inherency under 35 U.S.C.
§ 102 and for obviousness under 35 U.S.C. § 103. See In re Best,
562 F.2d 1252, 1255, 195 USPQ 430, 433-34 (CCPA 1977).
On this record, however, the examiner has not established
that any of the above-cited prior art references or the
publications referenced in the specification, page 1, do, in
fact, disclose products which reasonably appear to be identical
or substantially identical to the claimed products. On the
contrary, it would appear that conventional interpenetrating
polymer networks of the prior art cannot be dispersed in solvents
because extensive network formation far beyond the gel point
leads to an interpenetrating polymer network which has
substantially infinite molecular weight and which is considered
to extend throughout the volume of the polymerized material
(specification, page 7, lines 22 through 28). In contrast, the
claimed compositions are dispersible in a solvent. They are
prepared, for example, by incorporating just sufficient
crosslinking precursor so that polymerization terminates before
-5-
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