Appeal No. 1998-2119
Application No. 08/343,965
prior art that ’calendering and heating’ is the functional
equivalent of ’heating under pressure’," since the examiner
has not provided adequate explanation or evidence to support
such an assertion. To the contrary, as pointed out in the
rely brief on page 3 by the appellant, Japanese ‘845 uses
pressing and then heating without pressure in some steps of
the process (1-6) and heating under pressure in another step
of the process (9), which suggests to us that these processes
are not equivalent.
In this case, we find that neither the primary nor the
secondary reference includes key features of the claimed
invention, the key features being partial crushing of the
expanded metal sheet during the calendering phase, and then
heating the calendering stack to sinter the PTFE sheet,
thereby forming the composite self-lubricating foil-type
material.
It is our view that the examiner has engaged in
speculation and conjecture, as well as impermissible
hindsight, in attempting to combine the disparate teachings of
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