Appeal No. 2000-1026
Application 08/979,759
requires a suggestion to modify and a reasonable expectation
that the modification would have been successful).
Second, as pointed out by the appellants, neither
Whittemore nor Morrison contains any teaching of a phenol-
formaldehyde resole resin which has a number average molecular
weight of between about 200 and 600 as required by the
indepen-dent claims on appeal. Specifically, Morrison
contains no disclosure at all regarding the number average
molecular weight of the phenol-formaldehyde resin used in his
process, and the only phenol-formaldehyde resin number average
molecular weight disclosed by Whittemore is in the range of
about 3,000 to 5,000 (see lines 14-23 in column 5) which is
far above the here claimed range. Thus, even if the teachings
of Whittemore and Morrison were combined, no basis exists for
concluding that the method resulting from this combination
would possess the number average molecular weight feature
defined by the appellants’ independent claims.
In light of the foregoing, we cannot sustain the
examiner’s § 103 rejection of all appealed claims as being
unpatentable over Whittemore in view of Morrison.
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