Appeal No. 98-2457
Application No. 08/851,312
According to the examiner (answer, pages 3-5),
Jin et al. discloses a process for
manufacturing a superconducting elongated
article, comprising the steps of:
filling a silver pipe with material powder
of a superconducting compound oxide;
subjecting the silver pipe filled with the
material powder to first and second plastic
deformation steps, thereby reducing the cross
section of the silver pipe and producing a
composite body;
sintering the material powder filled in the
silver pipe; and then
slowly cooling the composite body. (See
the final paragraph of column 5 and the initial
paragraph of column 6).
Jin et al. fails to expressly disclose the
following: 1) that the first plastic deformation
step is "cold-plastic deformation", and the
second plastic deformation step is "hot-plastic
deformation"; and 2) controlling the cooling
rate of the cooling step to be "less than
50EC/min".
Regarding 1), in column 5, lines 59-65, Jin
et al. states that the powder-filled tube is
subjected to "cross section-reducing steps . . .
either at room temperature or at . . . elevated
temperatures". Accordingly, one having ordinary
skill in the art would have found it obvious to
have the cross section-reducing steps be all of
one type, i.e. "hot" or "cold", or any
combination thereof, depending on the results
sought to be attained with regard to the oxide
powder or the silver pipe. Alternatively, the
exact type and sequence of plastic deformation
steps performed by Appellant are deemed to be
matters of design choice, because such type and
sequence per se solve no stated problem nor
serve any apparent purpose. The significance of
performing cold- plastic deformation and then
6
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007