Appeal No. 1998-1772 Page 10
Application No. 08/578,047
the teachings of the applied prior art comes not from
impermissible hindsight but from the teachings of the applied
prior art as set forth above. In that regard, Ashok clearly
teaches the benefits of maintaining a constant cooling zone in
a vertical casting process very similar to Brooks. In fact,
Brooks is cited by Ashok as showing a prior art spray casting7
process. Furthermore, it is our opinion that die casting and
extruding are known alternatives of forming a product from a
molten metal alloy and accordingly it would have been obvious
to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time the invention
was made to have modified Brooks to have utilized die casting
when a die casted product was to be formed from a molten metal
alloy.
Lastly, the appellant argues (reply brief, pp. 3-5) that
it would not have been obvious to combine the teachings of
Ashok and Sato as suggested since it would not have been
obvious to use the auger style feeding system of Sato in the 8
7See column 1, lines 36-48, of Ashok.
8See Sato's groove 23a on tool 23.
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