Appeal No. 96-3650
Application No. 08/222,547
ordinary skill in the art to have added a brush to
the coating liquid reservoir of Bruno because Zimmer
teaches that transfer roller operations (such as
that of Bruno) are susceptible to foaming which
deteriorates coating uniformity and the addition of
a brush prevents air entrapment and the resulting
foam formation. Thus, it would have been obvious to
the skilled artisan that the addition of a brush to
the Bruno process would prevent foaming and ensure
uniform coating application.
OPINION
We can not sustain this rejection.
As correctly argued by the appellant and graphically
displayed in Exhibit A of the reply brief, if Zimmer’s brush
were added to the reservoir of Bruno as proposed by the
examiner, the resulting method would not include the
appellant’s claimed step of “partitioning said reservoir with
a fluid permeable member which defines a fluid permeable
boundary between the first chamber region and the second
chamber region” (independent claim 16) or the step of
“partitioning the reservoir cavity into a first reservoir
chamber and a second reservoir chamber with a fluid permeable
member” (independent claim 19). Stated more simply, the
examiner’s rejection can not be sustained because, even if the
applied references were combined in the manner proposed, the
resulting combination would not correspond to the here claimed
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