Appeal No. 2002-1653
Application No. 09/543,336
Appellants contend at page 3 of the principal brief that
there would have been no motivation for one of ordinary skill in
the art to look to the cited prior art for the problem of
adhesion for the coating composition. However, we concur with
the examiner that the requisite motivation arises from the
disclosure by both Chen and Hoy of coating compositions having
acetoacetate groups in amounts greater than the crosslinker
groups, resulting in an incompletely crosslinked polyaceto-
acetate. It is not necessary for a finding of obviousness under
35 U.S.C. § 103 that the prior art articulate the same motivation
as appellants. In re Kemps, 97 F.3d 1427, 1430, 40 USPQ2d 1309,
1311 (Fed. Cir. 1996); In re Dillon, 919 F.2d 688, 693, 16 USPQ2d
1897, 1901 (Fed. Cir. 1990) (en banc), cert. denied, 500 U.S. 904
(1991).
Appellants also maintain that the improved adhesion of the
claimed coating composition to a substrate is an unexpected
result. However, the examiner has persuasively demonstrated that
appellants' specification data is not of sufficient probative
value to rebut the prima facie case of obviousness (see pages 5-6
of Answer). Moreover, we note that appellants' brief fails to
present any analysis of the specification data which satisfies
their burden of establishing unexpected results. It is not
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