Appeal 2007-0305
Application 10/067,186
Obviousness of claims 5-11, 13, 14, 16-45, 48, and 51-64 over Giannetta,
Requejo, Zhang, Bosses, Maeoka, and Wnenchak
The Examiner cites Giannetta for the same teachings discussed above.
The secondary references (e.g., Requejo, Zhang, and Bosses) are cited, at
least in part, as evidence that filtration bags of various shapes, suitable for
use with conventional vacuum cleaners, were known in the art at the time of
the invention, and assembling filtration bags by sewing, gluing, or heat
bonding the components together was also known in the art. (Answer 4). In
addition, the Examiner cites Maeoka and Wnenchak as evidence that it was
“well known in the art that [air flow through a] filter media made from [a]
thin membrane of ePTFE, which is particularly light weight and flexible, . . .
is very high relative to [other] laminated materials” (id. at 5).
The Examiner’s position is that it would have been obvious for one of
ordinary skill in the art to have modified the shape of Giannetta’s ePTFE
filtration composite in accordance with the conventional shapes of vacuum
cleaner bags, and in accordance with the manufacturing techniques
described in the secondary references.
Appellants argue that “there is no disclosure in any of the references
to modify the filtration bag of Giannetta [ ] with a filtration bag as taught by
. . . Requejo [ ], Zhang, and Bosses with a layer of PTFE film as taught by
either Maeoka[ ] and Wnenchak[ ]” (Br. 8-9).
To the extent that this amounts to an argument that none of the
secondary references explicitly suggests modifying Giannetta, it does not
persuade us that the Examiner’s rejection should be reversed. We note that
the Supreme Court has recently emphasized that “the [obviousness] analysis
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