Appeal No. 1997-0818
Application No. 08/102,470
The references of record relied upon by the examiner are:
Fox et al. (Fox) 4,818,732 Apr. 4,
1989
MacKenzie et al. (MacKenzie) 5,215,942 Jun.
1, 1993
The appealed claims stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103
as unpatentable over MacKenzie in view of Fox.
We cannot sustain the stated rejection.
In contending that the process defined by appealed claim
1 finds substantial identical correspondence in the disclosure
of the primary reference, MacKenzie, the examiner implicitly
argues that diamond particles in MacKenzie’s reaction mixture
are “particles of a combustible material” which form a
component of a ceramic composite which are burned away when
the composite is heated “in either air or oxygen.”
Particularly, compare step e) of appealed claim 1.
In traversing the examiner’s stated rejection based
principally on the MacKenzie prior art disclosures, appellants
explain in their briefs that the fundamental purpose of
MacKenzie’s invention is to incorporate diamond particles into
a ceramic composite, not to “burn away” the particles by
heating the ceramic in an air or oxygen atmosphere. Moreover,
while MacKenzie recognizes that diamond may decompose to
3
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