Appeal No. 1997-1791 Application No. 08/485,304 In the rejection of the appealed claims, the examiner relies upon the following references: Young 2,856,268 Oct. 14, 1958 DeWolf, II et al. (DeWolf) 4,474,824 Oct. 2, 1984 Cohen et al. (Cohen) 4,595,578 Jun. 17, 1986 Welsh et al. (Welsh) 5,110,769 May 5, 1992 The present application is a continuation of U.S. Application No. 08/080,436, filed June 18, 1993, now abandoned. An appeal was taken to this Board in the parent application and, in a decision dated July 20, 1999, a merits panel of the Board affirmed the examiner's rejection of the appealed claims under 35 U.S.C. § 102 over the same Cohen patent presently applied by the examiner. The claims of the instant appeal contain a limitation not present in the claims of the prior appeal, namely, the hydrogel has a volatiles content of at least 40 wt.%. In addition, appellants now rely upon two declarations that were not argued in the prior appeal. Appealed claims 1-5 and 13-16 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b) as being anticipated by Cohen. We have thoroughly reviewed the respective positions advanced by appellants and the examiner. In so doing, we find that we cannot sustain the examiner's rejection. Although Cohen discloses inorganic hydrogel having the presently claimed pore volume, average particle size and fineness of grind, the examiner appreciates that Cohen is silent with -2-Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 NextLast modified: November 3, 2007