Appeal No. 96-1087
Application 08/068,700
is not sufficient to establish a prima facie case of obviousness with respect to claim 1.
Accordingly, we will not sustain the examiner's rejection of claim 1 under 35 U.S.C. § 103.
With respect to claim 2, Appellants argue at page 13, paragraph 4 that the
thickness "S" of the relaxing layer as claimed is "not less that 0.05 mm," but the Examiner
has pointed out that Figure 7 of Takamura and the specification at col. 4, lines 20-33
teaches the improvement of performance with the increasing thickness of the relaxing
layer. (See answer at page 4, paragraph 4- page 5, paragraph 1). The Examiner found
that it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the invention
to further increase the thickness of the relaxing or alloy layer to improve the performance,
reduce the incidence of ruptures and markedly improve the service life of the plug. We
agree. Moreover, the skilled artisan would have known that
.
the additional material would have been balanced against cost and temperature
variations under which the spark plug is to operate. The value of the thickness of this layer
of not less than 0.05 mm would have been a reasonable extension of the teaching of
Takamura. Appellants argue the relationship between the length and thickness and the
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