Appeal No. 96-0031
Application No. 08/078,918
required by the appealed claims. Also, although this is not essential to our holding, we
concur with appellant that the examiner errs in finding that barrier layer 30 is a release
layer. Fickenscher fails to disclose any release function for the barrier layer, but rather
teaches that the barrier layer comprises a composition of a water soluble resin solution
which functions to prevent the silicon release layer from discoloring the thermosensitive
layer.
We will also not sustain the examiner's rejections under 35 U.S.C. § 103 over
Fickenscher, taken alone, or in combination with the Encyclopedia Of Chemical
Technology. The examiner has not established that it would have been obvious for one of
ordinary skill in the art to modify Fickenscher to substantially completely cover the face of
substrate 12 with release coating 32.
Under the provisions of 37 C.F.R. § 1.196(b), we enter the following new ground of
rejection. Claims 2-5 and 11-14 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 112. As explained above,
these claims are improper dependent claims insofar as they do not further limit the
independent claims upon which they ultimately depend. For example, we are unable to
ascertain the scope of claim 4 when it is read in conjunction with claim 1, upon which it
depends.
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