Appeal No. 97-1922
Application No. 08/356,573
before us is whether it would have been obvious for one of
ordinary skill in the art to apply the antistatic composition
of Jonas to the polyester sheet of Tanabe either before the
stretching operations or between the first and second
stretching operations.
Appellants contend that “there is nothing in the prior
art which would suggest that a polythiophene with a conjugated
polymer backbone could withstand high heat without prohibitive
discoloration and without losing its conductivity” (sentence
bridging pages 4 and 5 of principal brief). In the words of
appellants, “the claims define an inventive advance in the
discovery that polythiophene with conjugated backbone in the
presence of a polymeric polyanion compound could withstand
stretching at high temperatures without being affected
adversely” (page 5 of principal brief). In support of their
argument, appellants have cited an article in Synthetic Metals
(Exhibit A) which, according to appellants, “establishes that
there were, at the priority date of the present invention,
serious concerns regarding the thermal stability of
poly(alkylthiophenes) and establishes that thermal undoping
was to be expected when polythiophene was subjected to
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