Appeal No. 2000-0710
Serial No. 08/788,959
The Rejection under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a)
Claims 3, 5-9, 20 and 21
We will sustain this rejection.
Appellants’ have not argued that it would not have been
obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art to combine the
teachings of Fujii and Rittberg at the time the invention was
made.
Appellants’ only argument with respect to claims 6 and 20
appears at page 9 of the brief. Here, appellants argue that
Rittberg does not teach or suggest a common electrode having
different thicknesses, as recited in claims 6 and 20. In the
specification at page 18, appellants teach that reduced thickness
areas allow a large displacement of the diaphragm layer VP into
the ink chamber IT so as to increase the volume of ink jetted via
orifice NH for printing. See Fig. 12.
We have not found this argument persuasive. In the sentence
bridging pages 1 and 2, Rittberg teaches that it was known in the
art of ink jet recording heads to place a metal membrane or cover
positioned over fluid-filled chambers for reducing the size of
the chambers for ink jetting. The reference teaches different
PZT projections and upper electrodes 13 would be expected to have
aligned edge layers just as taught by appellants. However, there is
no outstanding rejection of claims 1, 4 and 22 as obvious over Fujii
in view of Rittberg for us to consider.
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