Appeal No. 1997-2275
Application No. 08/390,281
claims on appeal. Fundamental to the examiner’s position is
the proposition that Sorathia would have suggested avoiding a
clog-problem in the method of Coke whereby the artisan with
ordinary skill “would recognize (based on the Sorathia
teachings) that by applying the rubber/latex mixture of Coke
without premixing (i.e., using the Fritz nozzle) one would
obtain an advantageous result, no clogging of the spray
equipment”. As correctly indicated by the appellant, however,
the clogging problem of Sorathia is avoided by using milled or
powdered fibers in patentee’s resin/fiber mixture (see lines 9
through 16 in column 3).
Thus, even assuming that an artisan would have considered
Coke’s method to have a clog-problem and would have been
motivated to avoid this problem in light of the other applied
references, the resulting method would not correspond to the
here claimed method. This is because Sorathia, the only
reference to disclose a clog-problem, avoids the problem by
using relatively small fibers. From our perspective, it
follows that, at best, Sorathia would have suggested avoiding
a potential clog-problem in Coke’s method by modifying the
premixing technique of this method (see the paragraph bridging
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