Appeal No. 95-3303
Application No. 07/960,892
surface of an article (specification, page 3, lines 1-5).
Thus, only "expensive or high-quality equipment" was marked.
As evidence of obviousness of the claimed method, the
examiner has relied upon the "admitted prior art" in view of a
multiplicity of "secondary references" which show that, inter3
alia, "transfer" is one of a "variety of well known
application procedures" (answer, page 9, last paragraph). We
agree with appellants, however, that just because the prior
art indicates that "the process of transferring multilayer
coatings from a temporary support to a permanent support" is
known "for general use" (answer, page 4, lines 5-7), is no
suggestion to the skilled artisan to employ this technique in
a process as claimed. Significantly, the examiner refers to
no disclosure in the applied references as teaching that a
"transfer" technique has a known advantage of producing
uniformly thick colored layers on a permanent support in a
3We are reminded of the statement of the court in Ball &
Roller Bearing Co. v. F.C. Sanford Mfg. Co., 297 F.163, 167(2d
Cir. 1924) that "One good reference is better than 50 poor
ones, and the 50 do not make the one any better." With
respect to the multiple stated rejections in the present
appeal, compare Ex parte Blanc, 13 USPQ2d 1383, 1384 (Bd. Pat.
App. & Int. 1989).
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