Appeal No. 97-0313
Application No. 08/346,083
an optical fiber, and the monomers of the present invention is
that the McAllister monomers contain a methacrylate group
whereas appellants' monomers contain a fluoroacrylate group.
Appellants also do not refute the examiner's legal conclusion
that it would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in
the art, based on the equivalency between a fluoroacrylate
group and a methacrylate group demonstrated by French '510, to
substitute appellants' fluoroacrylate group for the
methacrylate group of McAllister in order to obtain a polymer
having a lower refractive index, lower attenuation and higher
glass transition temperature. Rather, it is appellants'
position that:
Athough the suggested increase in the Tg, lower
refractive index, and lower attenuation of the
McAllister polymer(s) by replacing the methyl groups
with fluoro groups may be presumed, the actuality of
these particular properties does not predict the
other critical and unexpected benefits observed,
particularly the significant improvement in
decomposition temperature. [Page 11 of Brief].
Appellants contend that one of ordinary skill in the art would
have expected that replacement of methyl groups with fluoro
groups would yield an increase of only 30EC in decomposition
temperature over the decomposition temperature of the
methacrylate polymer, i.e., 200EC. Appellants maintain that
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Last modified: November 3, 2007