Appeal No. 2003-1398
Application 09/472,800
We refer to the examiner’s answer and to appellants’ brief and reply brief for a complete
exposition of the opposing views of the parties.
It is well settled that in order to establish a prima facie case of obviousness under
§ 103(a), the examiner must show that some objective teaching, suggestion or motivation in the
applied prior art taken as a whole and/or knowledge generally available to one of ordinary skill in
this art would have led that person to the claimed invention as a whole, including each and every
limitation of the claims arranged as required by the claims, without recourse to the teachings in
appellants’ disclosure. See generally, In re Rouffet, 149 F.3d 1350, 1358, 47 USPQ2d 1453,
1458 (Fed. Cir. 1998); Pro-Mold and Tool Co. v. Great Lakes Plastics, Inc., 75 F.3d 1568, 1573,
37 USPQ2d 1626, 1629-30 (Fed. Cir. 1996); In re Fine, 837 F.2d 1071, 1074-76, 5 USPQ2d
1596, 1598-1600 (Fed. Cir. 1988); In re Dow Chem. Co., 837 F.2d 469, 473, 5 USPQ2d 1529,
1531-32 (Fed. Cir. 1988).
As an initial matter, we find that, when considered in light of the written description in
the specification as interpreted by one of ordinary skill in this art, see, e.g., In re Hyatt, 211 F.3d
1367, 1372, 54 USPQ2d 1664, 1667 (Fed. Cir. 2000); In re Morris, 127 F.3d 1048, 1054-55,
44 USPQ2d 1023, 1027 (Fed. Cir. 1997), In re Zletz, 893 F.2d 319, 321-22, 13 USPQ2d 1320,
1322 (Fed. Cir. 1989), the plain language of appealed claim 1 requires that the claimed
ammonium nitrate-fuel oil (ANFO) blasting composition has the specified poured bulk density
and consists essentially of at least an organic fuel selected from the group consisting of mineral
oil, diesel fuels and mixtures thereof, and prilled ammonium nitrate which is specified to be
porous and have a poured bulk density of from about 0.9 to about 1.0 g/cc, a particle size of less
than about 1.2 mm and an oil-absorption capacity of greater than about 5%. Appellants define
oil absorption capacity in the written description in the specification as that measured by using
No. 2 fuel oil in either of two ways (pages 8-9). See, e.g., Morris, supra; Zletz, supra (“During
patent prosecution the pending claims must be interpreted as broadly as their terms reasonably
allow. When the applicant states the meaning that the claim terms are intended to have, the
claims are examined with that meaning, in order to achieve a complete exploration of the
2 Answer, pages 3-5.
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