Appeal No. 96-3615
Application 08/237,567
wherein mixing takes place primarily by diffusion (Fan, Table
1), would be a viable alternative for achieving Alonso’s
“ordered mixing” (i.e., coating a coarse granular material
with a fine cohesive powder), where the mechanism for
intermixing the coarse and fine materials is by transferring
fine particles from one coated particle to another by
“collision, friction and shearing” (Alonso, page 137, column
1).
In any event, even if we were to agree with the examiner
that it would have been obvious as a general proposition to
provide a V-blender in Alonso in view of Fan or Fischer, it is
questionable that the subject matter of claim 24 would result.
Alonso states that
actually the dye is not uniformly distributed in the
coated powder; rather a few particles are likely to
be highly coated while a few others are just
starting to be coated. For the time being it is not
possible to measure this distribution and it will be
assumed that most of the particles are coated to the
same extent so that only the mean value of the
distribution will be considered hereafter. [page
137, column 1; emphasis added]
Given this disclosure, it is debatable whether the
photosensitive diodes of Alonso are capable of functioning to
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