Appeal No. 2003-0574
Application No. 09/568,616
claim 26 obvious. Moreover, a person of ordinary skill in the art would have recognized
that the containment vessel of Miller must have been capable of withstanding a blast and
selected the appropriate resin composite and/or metal.
The specification discloses “[t]he impedance matching material layer 12 is
optional and is composed of material that matches the mechanical impedance of
fragments of the rotor 11, and is added to the containment structure 10 to reduce
momentum transfer”. (Specification, p. 6).
Miller discloses the layers 12 and 14 are designed to reduce the impact to
surrounding layers. However, Miller does not describe the various layers as being formed
of an “impedance matching material” as required by claims 13, 14, 20, 22, 23 and 27.
The Examiner has not presented arguments as to why a person of ordinary skill in the art
would have chosen to match the impedance of the layers. Thus, the rejection of claims
13, 14, 20, 22, 23 and 27 is reversed.
IV. The Obviousness-type Double Patenting Rejection
The Examiner has rejected claims 13, 14, 20, 22, 23 and 27 under the judicially
created doctrine of double patenting over claim 1 of U.S. Patent No. 6,203,924. The
Examiner believes the claims are directed to essentially the same invention. (Final
Rejection, paper no. 18, p. 2). We cannot sustain this rejection on this record.
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