Appeal No. 94-2616
Application 07/760,180
gap”. The only response by the examiner to this argument is that
“comparative example 3 [of the subject specification] spins
through an air gap, thus there appears to be no criticality to
this limitation” (Answer, page 8). However, this statement
(aside from being unsupported by comparative example 3 and
inconsistent with the specification disclosure (e.g., see the
last two sentences in the first full paragraph on page 3)) is
simply irrelevant to the obviousness issue under consideration.
On the record before us, the examiner has advanced no evidence at
all to show that the appellant’s claimed step of extruding
“through an air gap” was even known in the prior art much less
that the prior art would have suggested practicing such a step in
a method of the type defined by appealed claim 4.
In light of this persistently-argued and undeniable
deficiency of the applied prior art, it is clear that we cannot
sustain either of the examiner’s § 103 rejections of appealed
claim 4 as being unpatentable over MacDiarmid in view of
Elsenbaumer, Jen and the appellant’s disclosure of prior art in
the specification or alternatively over the appellant’s
aforenoted disclosure in view of Elsenbaumer and Jen.
4
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007