Appeal No. 1997-0820
Application No. 08/364,541
present application, stand withdrawn from consideration.
Claim 1 is illustrative:
1. A method of densifying expanded thermoplastic
material without injecting external heat comprising the steps
of:
(a) confining particles of expanded thermoplastic
material in a container; and
(b) reducing the volume of said container and
simultaneously uniformly agitating said particles until
substantially all said particles form a single substantially
unitary mass of softened material within said container.
The examiner has not cited prior art in his rejection of
the appealed claims.
According to appellant, the present invention relates to
"densifying and reusing expanded or foamed thermoplastic
wastes and the like and reforming them into usable end
products without externally-injected heat" (page 5 of
principal brief). Appellant's specification relates that2
"[b]y simultaneously agitating and compressing the material,
the energy produced by frictional forces is contained within
the mass of material itself, thus producing a liquid mass with
minimum consumption of energy" (page 2).
2The pages of the principal and reply briefs have not
been numbered by appellant.
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