Appeal No. 1996-2718
Application No. 08/221,207
This is an appeal under 35 U.S.C. ' 134 from the final rejection of claims 1-4, 6-8, and 10, all
the claims remaining in the application.
Claim 1, the only independent claim, is illustrative of the subject matter on appeal and reads as
follows:
A method of producing flexible fibers of a superconducting material, comprising:
melting a superconducting material in a furnace containing a heating space;
heating the melted superconducting material to a temperature above its melting point to
form a stream of melted superconducting material;
dropping the stream of the melted superconducting material into a vertically extending
barrel of a nozzle;
heating a fiberizing gas to a temperature ranging from 150EF to 750EF;
blowing the heated fiberizing gas downwardly through the barrel of the nozzle at a
sufficient rate to transform the dropped superconducting material in the barrel into fine ligaments
which cool and solidify in the barrel to form flexible superconducting fibers; and
collecting the flexible superconducting fibers.
The references relied upon by the examiner are:
Walz et al. (Walz) 3,283,039 Nov. 1, 1966
Wagner et al. (Wagner) 4,676,815 Jun. 30, 1987
Bock et al. (Bock) 5,047,391 Sept. 10, 1991
(filed Aug. 18, 1989)
Rejections
A. Under 35 U.S.C. ' 112, first paragraph, claim 4 is rejected as not having support in the
originally filed specification for the invention as now claimed.
B. Under 35 U.S.C. ' 112, second paragraph, claims 1-4, 6-9, and 10 are rejected as indefinite
for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the appellants regard as
January 31, 1991 and now abandoned.
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