Appeal No. 1997-3280
Application No. 08/212,065
to the applied prior art references, and to the respective
positions as set forth by the appellants and the examiner.
With regard to the examiner’s 35 U.S.C. § 103(a)
rejection based on Spencer ’783 or Spencer ’457, we find that
the examiner has failed to established a prima facie case of
obviousness. Since Spencer ’783 is the more comprehensive of
the two references, we will first address the rejections with
regard to this Spencer reference. The examiner’s position is
that Spencer ’783 discloses the claimed composite material in
Figure 5 having an electroluminescent light source 62 (Figure
2), wherein this light source is taught to be interchangeable
with the phosphorescent material 108 of Figure 5 (col. 9,
lines 26-30). The examiner calls attention to the phrase in
Spencer ’783 stating that "[t]hroughout this disclosure, the
expression ’luminous material’ or ’luminous composition’ is
intended to include any material or composition which has
phosphorescent, fluorescent and/or auto luminescent
properties" (col. 2,
5
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