Appeal No. 96-3991
Application No. 08/311,242
for the claimed subject matter. Accordingly, we will not
sustain the examiner's rejection.
Fulmer, as urged by appellant and appreciated by the
examiner, discloses a flame retardant plastic article that is
coated with a hydrophilic polyurethane foam having large
amounts of fire-retardant fillers therein (see Abstract). The
coating of Fulmer does not comprise the presently claimed
thermoplastic polymeric material in composition with an FRI
system. Scarso and Staendeke, on the other hand, disclose
what appellant's specification acknowledges to be within the
prior art, i.e., a composition comprising a thermoplastic
polymeric material and an FRI system. However, neither Scarso
nor Staendeke teaches or suggests utilizing the flame
retardant composition as a coating for any material, let alone
the presently claimed polymeric material. Accordingly, we
concur with appellant that Scarso and Staendeke provide no
teaching or suggestion of employing the disclosed flame
retardant compositions as a coating for the article of Fulmer.
In our view, the only motivation for coating the Fulmer
article with the composition of the secondary references
results from the use of impermissible hindsight.
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