Appeal No. 1997-1746
Application No. 08/469,801
not provide sufficient accessibility to the Tonkovich thesis
as to render it a “printed publication” under section 102(b).
According to the examiner, however, an additional circumstance
enhances the accessibility of this thesis to the requisite
level. This additional circumstance constitutes the fact that
the author of the thesis was the second of four listed authors
of a prior publication (i.e., the Ray et al. reference of
record) which was published in Chemical Engineering Science
approximately two years prior to the critical date.
Specifically, the examiner contends that the commonality
of authorship and similarity of titles for the Tonkovich
thesis and the Ray et al. publication would have elevated the
accessibility of the thesis to the level required for a
“printed publication.” The examiner in essence believes the1
Ray et al. publication would have led a person researching the
subject matter thereof to search for additional documents by
the authors and thereby would have discovered the Tonkovich
thesis via the author and title information in the previously
1It is here appropriate to emphasize the appellants’
point, which the examiner does not contest, that the above
mentioned titles are not particularly descriptive of the
specific subject matter defined by the appealed claims.
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