Appeal No. 1998-3320
Application 08/417,017
conductive particles.
The appellant argues that Tsunaga provides no teaching
which would have suggested to one of ordinary skill in the art
that coating the copper particles with silver and the titanate
coupling agent would reduce the conductance of the pigment to
80% or less of the original conductance (brief, page 4).
Tsunaga’s silver coated copper particles fall within the scope
of the appellants’ term “conductive pigment”. A comparison of
Tsunaga’s comparative example 3 and examples 3 and 4, as
discussed above, shows that use of a titanate reduced the
conductance to 80% or less of the conductance of silver coated
copper particles having no titanate.
The appellants argue that Tsunaga’s powder is intended to
be of high electrical conductance (brief, page 5). Tsunaga
states that the particles are to have good or high
conductivity (col. 1, line 53; col. 2, lines 55-56). However,
Tsunaga’s examples 3 and 4 indicate that the terms “high
conductivity” and “good conductivity” include conductivities
which are reduced 20% or more compared to the conductivities
of particles having no titanate (comparative example 3).
For the above reasons we conclude that the pigment
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