Appeal No. 96-1368
Application 08/080,891
The examiner cites Rogers (col. 1, lines 9-21) as
evidence that birefringent crystals suitable for use in
Wollaston prisms are expensive to make and contends that with
this fact in mind it would have been obvious in view of Murty
and De Vaan to replace Iwanaga's crystal Wollaston elements
with elements made of a polymerized liquid crystal monomer
"for the benefit of avoiding the cost of a birefringent
crystal" (Answer at 8). Appellants respond by arguing that
Iwanaga, like each of the other cited references, fails to
suggest forming a beam splitter of transparent wedge-shaped
polymers formed of polymerized uniaxially oriented liquid
crystalline monomer material. This argument fails to address
the collective teachings of the references and is also
unresponsive to the rejection, which relies collectively on
Rogers, Murty, and De Vaan for this teaching. We note
Appellants do not argue that in the event Rogers, Murty, and
De Vaan collectively teach wedge-shaped elements of
polymerized uniaxially oriented liquid crystalline monomer
material, it nevertheless would have been unobvious to use
such material to make the wedge-shaped elements in Iwanaga's
Wollaston prism 10 (Fig. 4). The rejection of claim 6 for
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