Appeal No. 1996-2638
Application No. 08/173,930
its entirety. As also indicated by the examiner (Answer, page
3), Masui ‘198 teaches that pins, like bars, can be used to
fix or hold a skin material in place during the formation of a
multi-layer molded product.
Given these teachings, we conclude that the use of pins,
in lieu of bars, in the process of Masui ‘860 or ‘179, would
have been at least suggested to one of ordinary skill in the
art. One of ordinary skill in the art would have had a
reasonable expectation that pins, like bars, would have
prevented the displacement of a skin material during the
formation of a multi-layer molded product. As is apparent
from the examiner’s finding at pages 3 and 4 of the Answer,
the applied prior art, as a whole, establishes that pins and
bars are art-recognized alternatives for holding or fixing a
skin material in a particular area during molding processes.
Note also that the structures of pins and bars are such that
their respective advantages and disadvantages would have been
readily apparent to one of ordinary skill in the art in fixing
or attaching an edge of the skin material in the particular
location within a mold taught by Masui '860 or '179 during the
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