Appeal No. 2002-1808 Page 4
Application No. 09/028,059
against employing hindsight by using the appellants’ disclosure as a blueprint to
reconstruct the claimed invention from the isolated teachings of the prior art. See, e.g.,
Grain Processing Corp. v. American Maize-Products Co., 840 F.2d 902, 907, 5
USPQ2d 1788, 1792 (Fed. Cir. 1988).
In support of the rejection, the examiner finds:
Corcoran Jr. et al disclose an abrasive bladed cutting wheel
(1, 5) comprising: a shaft . . . for rotation; an abrasive cutting
wheel having a hole in the center (see fig. 2) and an
abrasive layer of diamond particles (col. 1, lines 61-62)
bonded to the outer periphery of the wheel; the wheel has a
specific range for an outer diameter and a thickness; and at
least two abrasive cutting wheels (figs. 1 and 4); at least one
spacer (2,6). [answer at page 3].
The examiner recognizes that Corcoran does not disclose that the wheel has a Young’s
modulus in the range of 45,000-70,000 kgf/mm2 or that the wheel is made from
tungsten carbide cemented with cobalt. However, the examiner takes Official
Notice that cementing a wheel with tungsten carbide with cobalt is well known in the art
as disclosed in Miller and Sawluk and concludes:
. . . [it] is a matter of design and thus it would have been
obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time the
invention was made [and to consider] all the different design
choices and make a choice of cutting material depending on
the material of the workpiece to be cut. . . . the Young’s
modulus number is inherent in the wheel as all hard
materials posses[s] a Young’s modulus. The Young’s
modulus will be determined by varying percentages of the
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