Appeal No. 95-1042
Application 07/964,002
The examiner argues that appellants have not contested his
holding that the process of claim 46 would have been arrived at
by routine optimization, but have only stated that the
limitations of claim 46 are not taught in the references (answer,
page 11).
This argument is not well taken because, as stated above,
the examiner has the initial burden of explaining why the applied
references would have provided one of ordinary skill in the art
with both a suggestion to carry out the claimed process and a
reasonable expectation of success in doing so. Furthermore,
appellants argue that one of ordinary skill in the art would have
expected “that vaporization of organics from the green material
approaching the sintering zone would have left the powdered
ceramic material with no binder phase, and thus with insufficient
cohesiveness to draw trailing green material into the furnace”
(brief, page 12). Thus, appellants have challenged the
examiner’s assertion that arriving at the process recited in
appellants’ claim 46 would have involved no more than routine
optimization.
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