Appeal No. 2001-2509
Application No. 08/603,331
device which exits the mold is a single, unitary rubber device.
Appellant has not produced any factual support for the argument
that because the device of Ballantyne is made of two materials,
wire and rubber, it is not monolithic (page 6 of principal brief,
last paragraph).
As for the examiner’s rejection of claim 30 under § 103 over
Ballantyne, we are in complete agreement with the examiner that
one of ordinary skill in the art would have found it obvious to
determine the particular durometer value which optimizes the
particular application of the device. It is well settled that
the determination of a result effective variable is a matter of
obviousness for one of ordinary skill in the art. In re Boesch,
617 F.2d 272, 276, 205 USPQ 215, 219 (CCPA 1980). Regarding
claim 31, the examiner has properly not addressed the features of
this claim since appellant, as noted above, does not group claim
31 separately in the brief. In any event, we find that it would
have been prima facie obvious for one of ordinary skill in the
art to employ a conventional thermoplastic material as the blade
in a squeegee or scraper-like device.
We also concur with the examiner that it would have been
obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art to utilize the anti-
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