Appeal No. 1997-1122 Page 5
Application No. 08/170,177
slabs for shoe soles, floor mats and the like" (column 1,
lines 41-64).
Recognizing that the mat of Valley does not disclose
several of the features required by the appealed claims herein
(answer, page 4), the examiner additionally relies on the
teachings of Crouch and Stark in an attempt to make-up for the
deficiencies of Valley to establish the obviousness, within
the meaning of 35 U.S.C. § 103, of the claimed mat.
According to the examiner, it would have been obvious to
one of ordinary skill in the art to modify the block
containing mat construction of Valley to include a molded
porous body made of elastomeric granulate or shavings and a
binder rather than the unitary polyurethane or equivalent
material taught by Valley since Crouch would have suggested
that elastomeric materials were useful as oil absorbents and
Stark teaches that rubber scrap and binder and be combined and
molded into useful structures such as a mat (answer, pages 4
and 5). Moreover, it is the examiner's opinion that the
formation of additional spaces in the modified molded block
body of the mat of Valley as called for by the appealed claims
herein would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the
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