Appeal No. 95-3985
Application No. 08/016,644
upon issues which in our analysis are common to and shared by
each of the rejections before us. We will therefore
substantially confine our discussion to claim 1.
Our decision is based upon the examiner’s reliance on
the teachings of Bowers. Claim 1 requires that the starting
material of the process be a fluoroelastomer which has been
crosslinked by exposure to radiation. Bowers teaches the
irradiation crosslinking of a fluorocarbon copolymer of
tetrafluoroethylene and fluoroolefins. The examiner asserts
that crosslinking of a fluorocarbon copolymer as taught by
Bowers is applicable to fluoropolymers in general. Hence, it
would have been obvious to the person having ordinary skill in
the art to crosslink the polymer of the primary references of
Imbalzano or Nakahara using irradiation as taught by Bowers,
Brief p. 4 and 5, to provide the starting material of claim 1.
We find the disclosure of Bowers inadequate and
insufficient for the reasons infra to support a rejection of
claim 1. Hence we will not sustain any of the above six
rejections.
The examiner, in the rejection of claim 1, suggests that
it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art
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