Appeal No. 2001-0676
Application No. 08/941,132
appellants, however, are correct in asserting that the combined
teachings of Yasuyuki and either Burlett or Hayashi do not teach or
suggest graft-copolymerizing the deproteinized natural rubber.
Thus, we determine that the combined teachings of Yasuyuki and
Kondo would have rendered only the subject matter defined by claims
9, 11 and 13 through 16 prima facie obvious to one of ordinary
skill in the art. Similarly, we determine that the combined
teachings of Yasuyuki and either Burlett or Hayashi would have
rendered only the subject matter defined by claims 10, 12 and 17
through 19 prima facie obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art.
As a rebuttal to the prima facie case, the appellants rely on
a declaration filed under 37 CFR § 1.132 by Mr. Yoshiaki Miyamoto
(hereinafter referred to as “Miyamoto declaration”) and Tables 1-3
in the specification. See the Brief, pages 9-19 and the Miyamoto
declaration, pages 2 and 3. The Miyamoto declaration specifically
states that:
Through logic, the skilled artisan would reasonably
conclude that there would be little to no difference in
the efficiency of the grafting and epoxidation processes
when using natural rubber versus deproteinized rubber,
since the naturally occurring proteins are not extracted
from the rubber, per se, and are simply broken down to
smaller units called polypeptides.
Yasuyuki et al teaches that the deproteinized rubber
still contains the polypeptides formed during the
deproteinization step (see line 34 of page 4 to line 9 of
8
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