Appeal No. 1998-3205
Application No. 08/272,438
Furthermore, with regard to the § 103 aspect of the rejection, the examiner
has not explained how a person of ordinary skill would have been led from “here to
there,” i.e., from the composition of Bors to the “coalescent-free” coating
composition of appellants comprising “an aqueous emulsion-polymerized polymeric
binder having a glass transition temperature from about -35ēC to about +25ēC.”
Therefore, the examiner has failed to establish that Bors constitutes sufficient
evidence to support a conclusion of obviousness under 35 U.S.C. § 103. In fact,
based on our review of the Bors patent in its entirety, we find that Bors teaches
away from a “coalescent-free” coating composition as that term is defined in
appellants’ specification, page 4, third full paragraph. Bors states that “useful
emulsion polymers will generally have Tg s under 60ēC, since these polymers, with
sufficient coalescent, will form good quality films at ambient temperatures” (col. 5,
lines 59-62). The working examples of Bors disclose coating compositions having
relatively high amounts of coalescent.
Likewise, the examiner has not established that Smith describes or suggests
appellants’ “coalescent-free” coating composition comprising “an
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