Appeal No. 96-2945
Application No. 08/263,163
unpatentable in view of the applied prior art. Accordingly,
we will sustain the examiner's rejections for essentially
those reasons expressed in the Answer, and we add the
following primarily for emphasis.
We consider first the rejection of claims 1-4 under
§ 102/§ 103 over Chin. There is no dispute that Chin
discloses hydrogenated block copolymers of a vinyl aromatic
hydrocarbon and a conjugated diene that is grafted to at least
4% by weight of an acid compound or derivative thereof. Chin
expressly discloses that the amount of grafted acid monomer is
between about 0.5% and about 5% by weight. Consequently, Chin
specifically describes 5% by weight of a grafting acid
compound, which amount represents a description of the claimed
amount of "at least 4% by weight."
Ex parte Lee, cited by the examiner, states the following at
31 USPQ2d 1105, 1106 (Bd. Pat. App. & Int. 1993):
It has long been held that the disclosure in the
prior art of any value within a claimed range is an
anticipation of the claimed range. See, merely for
example, In re Wertheim, 541 F.2d 257, 267, 191 USPQ
90, 100 (CCPA 1976). We discern no reason for
treating the specific value disclosed in the
reference as the lower limit of a range any
differently from any other single value disclosed in
a reference. [Footnote omitted.] Thus, on the
record before us, we conclude that the reference, at
-4-
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