Appeal No. 1997-1619
Application No. 08/278,154
examiner fails to meet two limitations recited in claim 6, namely, (1) that the surface of the
preformed article is contacted with an encapsulation of a liquid material in an environment
of less than atmospheric pressure and (2) that the encapsulation material, when solidified,
has sufficient strength to maintain the integrity and vacuum characteristic of the at least one
chamber.
As to the first limitation, the examiner alleges that “one of ordinary skill in the art
would have recognized that the coating material used in the processes described by
(Deschamps) would have at least existed in a liquid state at some point during the
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formation of continuous layer”. Such allegation is unsupported.
As noted earlier, Deschamps employs highly reflective metals, i.e., Ni, Rh, Ta, Re
and Co, as his coating material. These materials normally exist as solids and the
examiner has provided no evidence that “vacuum deposition” of these solids involves
contacting the article with a liquid material. In fact, the examiner also has tendered no
evidence that any of the film deposition processes taught by Deschamps at column 3, lines
35-43, involves both sub-atmospheric pressure and a liquid material.
As to the second of these limitations, the examiner attempts to meet that limitation
by drawing an inference from the teachings in Deschamps as to a continuous layer on the
sphere or fiber and evacuated spaces within the sphere or fiber. We cannot adopt the
examiner’s inference because the examiner has neither cited any direct teaching in
5 Id., paragraph bridging pp. 3 and 4.
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