Appeal No. 1998-1779
Application No. 08/658,447
The Rejection of Claims 1-11, 16 and 18-23
After consideration of the positions and arguments presented by both the examiner
and the appellants, we have concluded that the rejection of independent claim 1 should
not be sustained.
Claim 1 defines an inorganic metal compound that is at least 40% by weight of the
antistatic layer. In contrast, Deal discloses the importance of having a sufficient
concentration of a metallic compound in an antistatic film for antistatic characteristics
(column 3, lines 29-32) and in the SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION Deal discloses
that the metallic compound is 0.005 to 0.02 weight percent of the film. In discussing the
Deal patent at column 2, lines 29-36, Itou draws attention to the fact that Deal teaches the
use of a metallic compound in proportions to impart the desired antistatic characteristics
without substantially degrading the image-transmitting capability of the coating. Thus,
the basis for the rejection on the percent by weight of the inorganic metal compound rests
solely with Deal.
There is simply no teaching or suggestion to modify the prior art to the “at least 40%
by weight percent” limitation of claim 1. Deal teaches a small effective amount (0.005 to
0.02 weight percent) of the metallic compound and the effective amount (40%) defined in
the claim is much larger in comparison. The examiner has identified no motivation as to
why one would have found it obvious to utilize such a large percent by weight of
inorganic metal compound to provide an antistatic characteristic when Deal teaches a
relatively small percent by weight of the compound is fitting to produce the desired
antistatic characteristic.
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