Appeal No. 95-3094
Application No. 07/975, 141
"Such is just common sense". See the answer at page 6.
However, the examiner has cited no prior art indicating that 3
a person of ordinary skill in this art, faced with the above
problem of carbon fiber breakage, would necessarily make the
proposed "common sense" modifications, much less prior art
disclosing precisely how and to what degree the jet velocities
should be reduced and the treatment path lengthened. Thus,
objective evidence in support of the examiner’s argument is
not of record.
As evidence that the claimed tow could have been made by
hand, the examiner relies on example III of the Davis
reference which illustrates a fiber blend of 6 inch long
carbon filaments with 6 inch long polyester filaments blended
by hand by a process of "teasing to separate and then
reblending" of the fibers. No evidence is of record that a
"continuous, linearly intermixed fiber tow" as claimed could
be produced by hand. As appellants’ counsel acknowledged at
3U.S. Patent No. 4,539,249 issued to Curzio on September
3, 1985 (based on application filed September 6, 1983), newly
cited in the answer, discloses a technique for the preparation
of a yarn composed of outer resin fibers surrounding a core of
graphite fibers, not a product having the fibers intermixed.
6
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