Appeal No. 2001-1820
Application No. 09/169,280
B. The Rejections over Blohowiak in view of Philipp
Since the same claims and references are involved in each
rejection, we consider the rejections under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a)
and under the judicially created doctrine of obviousness-type
double patenting together. Of course, although we make similar
obviousness analyses, we consider the entire references in the
section 103(a) rejection while we only consider the claimed
subject matter of Blohowiak in the obviousness-type double
patenting rejection. See In re Braithwaite, 379 F.2d 594, 600
n.4, 154 USPQ 29, 34 n.4 (CCPA 1967); In re Longi, 759 F.2d 887,
892-93, 225 USPQ 645, 648 (Fed. Cir. 1985); In re Braat, 937 F.2d
589, 592-93, 19 USPQ2d 1289, 1292 (Fed. Cir. 1991).
The examiner finds that claims 1-7 of Blohowiak teach all
the limitations of the rejected claims except for the inclusion
of pigments (see claims 1, 3, 4, 7, 8, 17 and 25) and the
protection from a space environment (see claims 24 and 25)
(Answer, page 5). The examiner thus applies Philipp for the
teaching that customary additives to a Zr-Si sol-gel coating
include pigments to provide color (id.). With regard to the
property of protection from a space environment, the examiner
concludes that this would have been obvious since the process of
coating and sol composition overlap in amounts and components and
7
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