Appeal No. 1997-2917
Application No. 08/351,697
from further consideration by the examiner as being directed
to a non-elected invention. See the final Office action dated
June 10, 1996. Claim 11, which was drawn to a non-elected
invention, was canceled subsequent to the final Office action
dated June 10, 1996. See the Amendment under 37 CFR § 1.116
dated September 5, 1996, Paper No. 13.
Appellants state (specification, pages 1 and 2) that:
[C]eramic materials are invariably in a bulky state.
Heretofore, it has been very difficult to produce a
porous ceramic film, particularly a porous thin film. It
has been virtually impossible to produce a porous thin
film containing pores of a uniform diameter. Such
methods as PVD, CVD, and sputtering and a method for anodic
oxidation of metals have been available for the production
of porous ceramic materials. These methods are at a
disadvantage in being expensive to implement, incurring
difficulty in obtaining products with large surface
areas, encountering difficulty in controlling micropores,
and limiting the metals usable as raw materials and
consequently limiting the ceramic materials produced.
According to appellants (specification, page 4), the claimed
sol-gel method for producing thin ceramic films or coatings
solves the above-mentioned problems. The claimed sol-gel
method is adequately described in independent claim 9 which is
reproduced below:
9. A method for producing a ceramic film containing
micropores of uniform diameter on a substrate, comprising:
2
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