Appeal No. 2004-1717
Application No. 09/647,129
that the examiner’s Sections 103 rejections are not well founded.
Accordingly, we will not sustain the examiner’s Section 103
rejections. Our reasons for this determination follow.
To establish obviousness under Section 103, there must be
some teaching, suggestion or motivation to arrive at the claimed
subject matter. In re Rouffet, 149 F.3d 1350, 1355, 47 USPQ2d
1453, 1456 (Fed. Cir. 1998). When determining the patentability
of a claimed invention which combines several elements, “the
question is whether there is something in the prior art
[references] as a whole to suggest the desirability, and thus the
obviousness, of making the [claimed] combination.” In re
Rouffett, 149 F.3d at 1356, 47 USPQ2d at 1456.
Here, the examiner relies on Michl for teaching a method of
making a wear-resistant laminate. See the Answer, page 3.
According to the examiner (the Answer, pages 3 and 4), this
method includes impregnating a print paper with an amino resin by
the use of metering rollers and coating the resulting damped wet
print paper with a knife coater using a composition comprising
melamine resin, abrasive particles and a wet tack reducing aid.
Recognizing that Michl does not teach, inter alia, the claimed
spray coating technique, including the claimed coating dispersion
containing a flow-promoting agent, the examiner relies on Hoover
for teaching such spray coating technique and flow-promoting
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