Appeal No. 1998-0241 Page 10
Application No. 08/465,373
Therefore, we shall sustain the examiner's rejection of claim 1 and claims 2, 4, 9 and
10 which stand or fall therewith under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b).
We shall not, however, sustain the examiner's rejection of claim 6, which requires that
the step of applying sound comprises applying low frequency sound at locations on opposite
sides of the veil "in a vertically offset relationship." With regard to this limitation, the examiner
finds that the locations of the deflection gaps "are in vertically offset relationship with the
fiberizer" (final rejection, page 3). From our perspective, the language "in a vertically offset
relationship" as used in the claim would have been understood by one of ordinary skill in the
art as requiring that the sound be applied at locations which are vertically offset from one
another. The examiner's apparent interpretation of this language as merely requiring that the
sound application locations be vertically offset relative to anything strikes us as unreasonable in
this instance. As best seen in Figures 1 and 2, the deflection gaps 5, 6 of Troth are located on
opposite sides of the ribbon of fibers 1, but they are not in vertically offset relationship with
one another. Thus, it is our opinion that Troth fails to disclose all of the limitations of claim 6.
The obviousness rejection
The appellants' only argument with regard to the patentability of claims 8 and 11 relies
on the assertion that Troth does not disclose the step of applying sound to a portion of the fibers
to cause them to deviate from their path of travel. For the reasons discussed above with regard
to the rejection of independent claim 1, we do not find this argument persuasive. Accordingly,
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