Appeal No. 1996-1777 Page 6
Application No. 08/034,009
and the process of producing the magnet of Akioka '797 is
substantially the same as that of appellants except for the
strain rate limitation.
The flaw in the examiner's position, however, is that
appellants have reasonably established, on the present record,
that variations in the strain rate during the manufacturing
process results in product magnets with different properties
(See, e.g., Table 13, specification, page 30). On this
record, the examiner has not established that any of the
magnet compositions disclosed by Akioka '797 are both
identical in composition and properties with the magnets
encompassed by claim 24. Nor has the examiner furnished any
convincing line of
reasoning suggesting the obviousness to one of ordinary skill
in the art of the product defined by claim 24 in light of the
teachings of Akioka '797.
Similarly, the examiner's stated rejection of claim 24 as
being unpatentable under § 103 over Kobayashi falls short of
presenting a prima facie case of obviousness. This is so
since Kobayashi, like Akioka '797 does not teach the claimed
strain rate and the examiner has not established that the
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