Appeal No. 1997-3339
Application 08/306,610
angle.” See the answer at page 5. However, the examiner has
produced no prior art reference showing that a milled carbon
fiber is necessarily cut at such an angle. Thus, there is no
objective evidence of record to support the examiner’s
contention that with respect to prior art milled carbon
fibers, a cut surface having a plane of the cut in the axis of
the fiber intersecting or crossing at an angle of 65E or 90E
is necessarily produced. In fact, appellants produce such a
cut surface by a process wherein the milling is performed by a
procedure comprising revolving a rotor equipped with a blade
at a high speed and contacting the fiber with the blade to cut
the fiber in a direction perpendicular to the fiber axis.
Thus, in appellants processing of such fibers, the milling is
performed by the use of a Victory mill, jet mill or cross flow
mill. See the specification at page 11, line 25, through page
12, line 5. However, with respect to the prior art,
appellants report that milling of carbon fibers has been
typically performed by means of a Henschel mixer, ball mill or
mixing machine, but that milling performed by these techniques
is not an “appropriate procedure” because such procedures
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