Appeal No. 96-0021
Application No. 08/105,820
as obvious over Ghandehari ‘499 in view of Ghandehari ‘574
(Id.). We reverse all of the examiner’s stated rejections for
reasons which follow.
OPINION
A. The Rejection under § 102(b)
The method recited in appealed claim 6 comprises forming
a mixture of a powder of NdFeB and a powder of an alloy
consisting of specified amounts of gallium and at least one
rare earth metal, magnetically orienting (i.e., aligning) the
mixture, compressing the mixture, and sintering the compressed
mixture in an oxygen-free atmosphere.
The examiner recognizes that Ghandehari ‘499 fails to
disclose a sintering step but “teaches a sub-sintering step”
(Answer, page 3). However, the examiner finds that Ghandehari
‘499 teaches that “it is old and therefore well known” that
the method steps “mix-align-compress-sinter” for compounds
comprising NdFeB are part of “the previous state of the art”
(Id. citing column 4, the paragraph beginning at line 6). The
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