Appeal No. 1999-0546
Application No. 08/724,542
and energy costs" (answer, page 3). Reduced costs may be
achieved in a variety of ways (e.g. adding more castings to
each batch) and we do not view the examiner’s speculative cost
reduction alone as providing a motivation to combine these
prior art teachings so as to arrive at appellants' claimed
process.
The appellants argue that "Bonnemasou suggests performing
batch processing steps continuously while Appellant (sic)
teaches continuous processing of casting without batch
processing. Clearly the definition of 'continuous' in each
process is different" (brief, page 7). We note the
appellants' comments that "continuous" processing suggested by
Bonnemasou is different from appellants' "continuous"
processing in that Bonnemasou suggests sequential steps rather
than appellants' process wherein "[t]he castings are
continuously moving in and out of the fluidized bed... [t]here
is no pause in the moving line of castings" (brief, page 7).
The examiner's answer does not respond to this point and
again, it is not evident to us that the examiner has provided
factual support for his conclusion that the proposed
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