Appeal No. 1999-2815
Application 08/641,827
pressure proppant art. (brief, pages 5-6). On page 7 of the
brief, appellants argue that the long fiber disclosed in Wimmer
would be inoperative and defeat the purpose of Graham ‘627.
We observe that in the paragraph bridging pages 6-7 of the
answer, the examiner does not address every point raised by
appellants regarding the non-analogous art argument regarding
Graham ‘627 and Wimmer. The examiner simply states that Wimmer
teaches that use of fibers results in reinforcement, and that it
is “quite obvious . . . to use fibers of very small length for
proppants than those for a bath tub [bathtub]”.
Hence, we find that the examiner has insufficiently
addressed the issue of whether one skilled in the art would look
to the glass fiber reinforced plastic articles art (such as the
bath tub art of Wimmer) to solve a problem in the proppant art.
In view of the fact that the examiner has not satisfied this
burden, we agree with appellants’ position in this regard.
With respect to the combination of Graham ‘627 in view of
Graham ‘651, appellants argue that Graham ‘651 is concerned with
dimensional stability of its resin particles and that dimensional
stability relates to whether the proppant will flatten.
Appellants state that this is important when there is no
substrate, as in Graham ‘651. Appellants point out that this is
irrelevant with regard to Graham ‘627, where an actual substrate
is employed. Appellants further explain that Graham ‘651 relates
to deformable proppant for monolayer patterning. To the
contrary, appellants state that coatings are employed in Graham
‘627 to improve crush strength. Appellants state that thus the
increase in dimensional stability of Graham ‘651 is irrelevant to
the coated proppant of Graham ‘627, and would not motivate one
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