Appeal No. 97-0176
Application No. 08/313,604
a. Claims 1 and 9
We sustain the rejection of claims 1 and 9 under 35
U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over Van Dievoet in view of
Clapham.
Van Dievoet discloses a method of fabricating a porous
end plug for a nuclear fuel rod comprising the steps of
superposing thin sheets of metal to form a layered assembly,
pressing the layers of the assembly together to form a
laminate in which the layers are bonded together with
directional oriented porosities between the layers, and
cutting a "plug" from the laminate (see claim 1 at columns 32
and 4). Specifically, Van Dievoet describes the thin sheets
of metal as "sheet-iron" (col. 2, lines 27 and 28) which have
been oxidized on their surface. The reference further
discloses that the cut out piece or blank 7 may be cut out of
the sheet metal shown in Figure 3 in a perpendicular direction
to the laminating process (col. 3, lines 4-8). In Figure 4,
Van Dievoet shows a plug 3 which was cut out of the sheet-iron
of Figure 3 (col. 2, lines 6-8). The plug is shown in Figure
2Van Dievoet uses the word "plug" in referring to the
cut out piece 7 in col. 4, line 2.
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