Appeal No. 96-3938 Application No. 08/288,861 As indicated earlier, however, we will sustain the examiner’s section 103 rejection of claims 10 through 25 since, in our view, Debier would have suggested an adhesive composition of the type defined by these claims. In support of his contrary view, the appellant argues that “[t]he claimed adhesive compositions of the present invention have been claimed as displaying a range of criticality of 75 < [S] + [V] < 100 undemonstrated in the prior art, particularly the Debier . . . patent” (brief, page 5). This argument is unpersuasive. Rather than attempt to interpret the appellant’s meaning in his use of the term “undemonstrated”, we simply point out that the test for obviousness is what the reference teachings would have suggested to those of ordinary skill in the art. In re Keller, 642 F.2d 413, 425, 208 USPQ 871, 881 (CCPA 1981). In this regard, it is significant that the content concentrations defined by the independent claims on appeal are disclosed by Debier (e.g., see claims 1 and 3 of the patent). Moreover, patentee’s 35% styrene content and his 45% butadiene content satisfy the formula set forth in these appealed independent claims notwithstanding the appellant’s apparent belief to the 6Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 NextLast modified: November 3, 2007