Appeal No. 95-0931
Application No. 08/070,638
application of heat the center strip flows and fills voids to
provide sealing water-tight integrity to the seam.
Appealed claims 2-4, 7, 8 and 13 stand rejected under
35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over Sheahan in view of
Van Ornum.
Upon careful consideration of the opposing arguments
presented on appeal, we concur with appellant that the prior art
applied by the examiner fails to establish a prima facie case of
obviousness for the claimed subject matter. Accordingly, we will
not sustain the examiner's rejection.
The fatal deficiency in the applied prior art is that
Sheahan, the primary reference, in addition to requiring
modification to meet the claimed non-crosslinked center strip and
side strips of elastomeric rubber, fails to disclose or suggest a
sealing tape, a basic requirement of the claimed subject matter.
The product of Sheahan is a unitary covering for roofs, pipes and
the like that is monolithic in nature. The product of Sheahan is
simply not a sealing tape, and no modification of the specifics
of Sheahan's article will make it one. Also, while the examiner
dismisses the preambular language "for sealing linear seams
between adjacent elastomeric substrates," said language sets
forth a certain function of the claimed sealing tape that the
product of Sheahan does not appear to be capable of performing.
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Last modified: November 3, 2007