Appeal No. 2007-2156
Application No. 10/606,358
was known to have been utilized to anchor glass fibers in elastomeric materials
(Answer 6-7).
Appellants’ citation to Table 1 as evidence of non-obviousness is not
persuasive for reasons set forth by the Examiner in the Answer (pages 8-9). We
agree with the Examiner that the evidence presented is not commensurate in scope
with the claimed invention and fails to provide testing of the closest prior art. 2 We
recognize that the information presented in the graph has not been presented in the
form of a declaration. However, even if the evidence were presented in a
declaration, it would not be persuasive of non-obviousness for the reasons outlined
in the present record.
Contrary to Appellants’ arguments, it would have been obvious to combine
the teachings of Uchida, Marzocchi ‘059 and Marzocchi ‘280 for the reasons stated
by the Examiner. Uchida describes the advantages of incorporating short glass
fibers into a studless tire. Uchida also discloses that it is desirable to prevent the
fibers from dropping out of the tread surface during running (¶0013-0016). A
person of ordinary skill in the art would have recognized that the advantages
disclosed by Uchida would have been lost if the glass fibers were allowed to
separate from the tire tread. A person of ordinary skill in the art seeking to prevent
the glass fibers from separating from the tire tread would look to a surface treating
2 Appellants in the Brief (page 8) provide a graph exhibiting results achieved
utilizing a comparative example 3 of Uchida and an example representative of the
claimed invention. The Examiner correctly recognized that the data presented
from Uchida is not representative of the invention disclosed therein.
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