Appeal No. 2001-1464 Page 6
Application No. 09/141,499
not have at once envisaged superplastic materials upon reading the general disclosure by
Okada of any metal or alloy. Compare In re Petering, 301 F.2d 676, 681, 133 USPQ 275,
280 (CCPA 1962) (in addition to disclosing a generic chemical formula, the prior art
reference disclosed preferred substituents from which the court determined that one skilled
in the art would have at once envisaged each member of the claimed class of
compounds). Moreover, we perceive nothing in the teachings of Okada of using any metal
or alloy which would have suggested using a material capable of exhibiting superplastic
properties.
Furthermore, even if an artisan were to use a metal or alloy which is capable of
exhibiting superplastic properties in Okada’s process, we find nothing in Okada which
would have taught or suggested to such an artisan the use of the working temperatures
o o
900 C and 700 C employed in the exemplary embodiment disclosed by Okada for such
materials. The selection of those particular working temperatures appears to have been
made based upon the characteristics of the deformation resistance versus working
temperature graph of Figure 3, which is specific to the carbon steel used in the disclosed
exemplary embodiment and, thus, would not necessarily be suitable for other pipe
materials.
In that each of the rejections before us on appeal is based at least in part on
theexaminer’s flawed determination that Okada teaches or suggests a step of heating the
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