Appeal No. 95-3201
Application No. 08/083,957
This is an appeal from the final rejection of claims 8
and 15, all the claims remaining in the present application.
A copy of illustrative claim 15 is appended to this decision.
The examiner relies upon the following reference as
evidence of obviousness:
Freed 5,208,083 May 4, 1993
(filed Feb. 28, 1992)
Appealed claims 8 and 15 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103 as being unpatentable over Freed.
Upon careful consideration of the opposing arguments
presented on appeal, we concur with appellants that the
applied prior art fails to establish a prima facie case of
obviousness for the claimed subject matter. Accordingly, we
will not sustain the examiner's rejection.
The appealed claims define a polymeric blend comprising,
inter alia, "at one least natural and melt-intractable polar
polymer selected from starch, chitin, chitosan, lignin or
cellulose." We interpret the claimed terms "natural" and
"melt- intractable" in light of the present specification,
specifically, page 4, as non-chemically modified polymers that
are "extremely difficult to process, and may be described as
-2-
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