Appeal No. 1998-0316
Application No. 08/355,646
The examiner takes the position that the claimed time range
would have been obvious as such ranges "comply with further
injection of the resin prior to complete solidification"
(answer, page 4), while appellant contends that such time is
not suggested by the prior art or recognized as a result-
effective variable, such that it would have been obvious to
optimize it, citing In re Antonie, 559 F.2d 618, 621, 195 USPQ
6, 9 (CCPA 1977) (reply brief, pages 4 to 6).
In the process disclosed by Ohasi, the plunger (pin) must
be projected into the cavity after the cavity and space below
the plunger are completely filled with plastic (resin), but
before the plastic is cooled, so that the formation of voids
is prevented (col. 3, lines 11 to 24 and 31 to 35). It
therefore would have been evident to one of ordinary skill
that the time at which the plunger of Ohasi is projected after
the plastic has been injected into the mold is crucial, so
that any voids will be filled before the plastic solidifies,
i.e., that the elapsed time between plastic injection and
projection of the plunger is a result-effective variable.
That being the case, it would have been obvious to experiment
to obtain the optimum range for such time. Cf. In re Huang,
6
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007