Appeal No. 1999-0545 Page 9
Application No. 08/606,068
2 USPQ2d 1525, 1528 (Fed. Cir. 1987).
Claim 4 adds to claim 3 the requirement that the induction heating means comprise
“annular coils encompassing the dam blocks at the catenaries.” Such an induction heating
2
coil is not disclosed or taught in Wood or Ross, and we are not persuaded that it would
have been obvious by the examiner’s unsupported conclusion that “the shape of the
induction coil depends on the configuration of the objected [sic, object] to be heated” and
thus “[i]t would have been obvious to those of skill in the art to design an appropriate
induction coil for heating the specific object” (Answer, pages 5 and 6). A prima facie case
of obviousness therefore has not been established with
regard to the subject matter recited in claim 4, and we will not sustain the rejection of claim
4 or of claim 5, which depends therefrom.
Independent claim 7 recites the invention in terms of a method for continuously
casting molten metal. It comprises the steps of rotating first and second endless belts and
first and second endless dam blocks to form a casting region wherein the dam blocks
have a length longer than the belts to form catenaries, providing molten metal to the casting
region, and inductively heating the edge dam blocks with induction heaters “disposed in
2The Ross induction heater is U-shaped and does not “encompass” the element
being heated.
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