Appeal No. 2004-0315
Application No. 09/865,687
layer of his product embodiments. The examiner’s association of
this disclosure with the polyamide composition of Baumann’s outer
layer simply is not anticipatorily supported by patentee’s
teachings.
In addition to the foregoing, the appellant also argues that
Baumann contains no teaching of the independent claim feature
wherein “the skin layer on the inner and outer surface provide a
continuously conductive path from the inner surface to the outer
surface.” We agree. As discussed above, the Baumann patent
contains no teaching that the outer surface layer is electrically
conductive. Even if the patent were not deficient in this
regard, the reference still would not anticipate the claim
feature under review. This is because, as explained by the
appellant in the reply brief, electrically conductive layers
could be disposed respectively on inner and outer surfaces
without being physically connected to each other and thereby
failing to provide “a continuously conductive path from the inner
surface to the outer surface” as required by the appealed
independent claims.
For the above stated reasons, the examiner’s anticipation
finding with respect to the subject matter defined by appealed
independent claims 1 and 20 is incorrect. It follows that we
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