Appeal No. 96-0116
Application No. 08/088,012
It would have been obvious to one having ordinary
skill in the art at the time the invention was made to
add an additional layer, a taught by Aslam et al. (‘426)
to the image forming method of Ng and Aslam et al. (‘038)
in order to prevent offset.
The examiner’s above quoted conclusion of obviousness is
without merit for at least two reasons. First, the Aslam ‘426
patent is not prior art against the here claimed invention
since the inventors named in this patent and in the subject
application are identical and since this patent did not issue
more than one year prior to the subject application filing
date. 35 U.S.C. § 102(b); In re Fout, 675 F.2d 297, 300-
301, 213 USPQ 532, 535, footnote 2 (CCPA 1982); Ex parte
Imris, 218 USPQ 957 (Bd. Pat. App. & Int. 1982). Second, even
if Aslam ‘426 were prior art, the teachings thereof and the
teachings of Ng and Aslam ‘038, when combined in the above
quoted manner proposed by the examiner, would not produce a
method corresponding to the method defined by the appealed
claims. This is because, as correctly argued by the
appellants in their Brief, none of these references contains
any teaching or suggestion of the here claimed feature wherein
the underlay toner is adhesive to the fuser at a release
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