Appeal No. 2001-1698
Application 08/864,176
al. (Cohrs) and Raabe et al. (Raabe), and of claims 11 through 20, 37, 38, 42 and 432 under
35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Mages in view of Sands and Schwarz, further in
view of either of Komiya or Leonard, and still further in view of Cohrs and Raabe.3
It is well settled that in order to establish a prima facie case of obviousness, the examiner
must show that some objective teaching, suggestion or motivation in the applied prior art taken
as a whole and/or knowledge generally available to one of ordinary skill in this art would have
led that person to the claimed invention as a whole, including each and every limitation of the
claims, without recourse to the teachings in appellants’ disclosure. See generally, In re Rouffet,
149 F.3d 1350, 1358, 47 USPQ2d 1453, 1458 (Fed. Cir. 1998); Pro-Mold and Tool Co. v. Great
Lakes Plastics Inc., 75 F.3d 1568, 1573, 37 USPQ2d 1626, 1629-30 (Fed. Cir. 1996); In re Fine,
837 F.2d 1071, 1074-76, 5 USPQ2d 1596, 1598-1600 (Fed. Cir. 1988); In re Dow Chem. Co.,
837 F.2d 469, 473, 5 USPQ2d 1529, 1531-32 (Fed. Cir. 1988).
There is no dispute that a multilayer adhesive tape comprising a multilayer carrier
containing a core layer, a skin layer on one or both sides of the core layer and an adhesive layer
on opposing faces of the multilayer carrier which can be produced by the method of appealed
claim 14 corresponds to a multilayer adhesive tape disclosed in Schwarz. Indeed, Schwarz
discloses a multilayer carrier containing at least one elastic layer, which can be foamed, and at
least one plastic layer (e.g., col. 2, line 63, to col. 3, line 8). Compare Schwarz Figs. 1 and 2
(col. 3, line 51, to col. 4, line 23) with specification Fig. 1 (page 6). As pointed out by the
examiner, the method of making the multilayer adhesive tape from two different commercially
available tapes, one containing an elastomeric foamed plastic layer and the other containing PVC
plastic layer, taught in Schwarz (e.g., col. 2, line 63, to col. 3, line 8 ) is not the method of
appealed claim 1.
record that the abstract is not available prior art. We have considered the translation in reviewing
the grounds of rejection.
2 See, e.g., the amendment of July, 1999 (Paper No. 24). Appealed claims 1 through 20, 34, 35,
37, 38 and 40 through 44 are all of the claims in the application.
3 Answer, pages 4-7.
4 Appellants state in the brief that “[a]ll of the appealed claims will stand or fall together” (page
4). Thus, we have considered appealed claim 1 in deciding this appeal. 37 CFR
§ 1.192(c)(7)(2000).
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