Appeal No. 1997-1522
Application 08/296,779
1984) and W.L. Gore & Assoc., Inc. v. Garlock, Inc., 721 F.2d 1540, 1551-53, 220 USPQ
303, 311-13 (Fed. Cir. 1983), cert. denied, 469 U.S. 851 (1984).
On this record, in our view the examiner has failed to sustain his burden. The
examiner has pointed to the fact that King contains a dielectric layer to alter the reflective
color of the substrate and to the fact that Optics describes multilayer optical interference
films and has concluded that it would have been obvious to use the multilayer optical
interference films in Optics for the interference coating of King. However, he has drawn
this conclusion without pointing to any teaching or suggestion or inference in the cited prior
art, or knowledge generally available in the relevant art, that would have motivated one of
ordinary skill in the art to combine the references as suggested by the examiner to arrive at
the claimed invention.
In having both the semireflective layer and single thin dielectric layer on a
transparent support, King’s invention provides a color enhancement effect by interference
between light reflected from a semi-reflecting layer on the transparent substrate and light
reflected from the outer surface of a dielectric layer which is hermetically sealed over the
semi-reflecting layer. The color metallic appearance obtained by King is observable to
the viewer on the side of the incident light. King does not suggest the use of a multilayer
dielectric interference film to create the interference effect but rather the combination of the
semireflective layer and single thin dielectric layer. The Optics reference provides a
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