Appeal No. 1996-2566
Application No. 08/107,656
To the extent that the Becher process is otherwise
comparable to the herein claimed process , appellants 1
correctly observe that the heat-treating conditions required
for the claimed process are much milder than Becher’s, wherein
temperatures from 130 to 200E C at comparatively high
pressures are utilized. The examiner’s assertion (answer,
page 6) that Becher teaches “subsequent heating” simply does
not come to grips with appellants’ arguments and the
requirements of the appealed claims. Thus, the examiner has
failed to meet his burden of providing an adequate factual
basis to support a legal conclusion that the subject matter
“as a whole” defined by the appealed claims would have been
obvious at the time appellants’ invention was made. 35 U.S.C.
§ 103. In light of the above and further in view of the
arguments in appellants’ brief, we cannot sustain the
examiner’s stated rejections of the appealed claims for
obviousness.
Because we have sustained the examiner’s rejections of
each of the appealed claims under the written description
1Numerous other differences exist between the process
defined by appealed claim 12 and Becher’s prior art process.
11
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