Appeal No. 1998-2317
Application No. 08/327,601
used. The examiner, on this record, has not shown any
convincing argument or evidence to support the allegation that
these adhesives of Stillman are “water-based adhesives” as
required by claim 1 on appeal.
The declarant in the Declaration under 37 CFR § 1.132
specifically states that the adhesives described by Stillman are
extrusion laminating adhesives and are not water-based adhesives
(¶5). The examiner’s only rebuttal of this statement is that
“claim 3 of the present application requires that the adhesive
is an acrylic copolymer, and Stillman discloses the use of
acrylic copolymers.” Answer, page 9. The examiner’s rebuttal
is in error since, as previously discussed, Stillman does not
disclose acrylic acid copolymers as adhesives but teaches the
use of ethyl acrylic acid copolymer adhesives (col. 3, l. 58).
Furthermore, the acrylic acid copolymer of claim 3 depends upon
claim 1, which requires the adhesive to be a “water-based”
adhesive while the adhesive of Stillman is not necessarily a
water-based adhesive, depending on the ethyl substituent and the
other monomer(s) used to form the copolymer.
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