Appeal No. 2001-0327
Application 08/990,295
Having carefully reviewed the envelope feeder
described in the Lo patent and the sheet feeding apparatus of
Nakagawa, we find that we are in full agreement with
appellants’ arguments on pages 6-12 of their brief and in
their reply brief. Like appellants, we find the examiner’s
determination that Lo has a friction member with a frictional
force yielding portion that has a static friction coefficient
of 1.0 to 1.5 to be entirely without foundation. Nothing in
Lo mentions a static coefficient of friction in the claimed
range, or of any other value, for the envelope separating
members (50, 53, 73) therein. Moreover, we are in total
agreement with appellants that the examiner’s theory (answer,
page 3) of some well known (standard engineering handbook)
direct relationship between durometer hardness and static
coefficient of friction is based on total speculation and
conjecture and has been arrived at by inappropriately
extrapolating a
general relationship from some specific individual durometer
hardness-coefficient of friction examples in the patents
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