Appeal No. 2000-1782
Application No. 08/933,639
In proposing to combine Joyner, Saigne and Bright to
reject the appealed claims, the examiner concludes that it
would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art
“to provide a sintered material in Joyner et al. as taught by
Saigne to simplify the attachment process, i.e., to utilize
one layer instead of a plurality of layers” (answer, page 4),
and “to provide a sintered macroporous substrate having the
claimed dimension in the container of Joyner et al. as taught
by Bright to optimize the amount of air entering the container
while providing a rigid support” (answer, page 4).
The disparate natures of the articles respectively
disclosed by Joyner, Saigne and Bright indicate, however, that
the combination proposed by the examiner stems from
impermissible hindsight. In short, there is nothing in
Saigne’s disclosure of a filter element designed for pressure
control in a propane tank and/or in Bright’s disclosure of a
macroporous intermediate product used to make a microporous
industrial filter which would have suggested replacing the
microporous membrane in Joyner’s infant nursing bottle with a
sintered macroporous element as recited in independent claims
1, 5, 9, 14 and 19. Thus, the combined teachings of the
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