Appeal No. 2002-0895
Application No. 09/402,552
do not argue, much less point to any evidence, including
Ananthapadmanabhan, that one of ordinary skill in the art would
not have reasonably expected to form a spray powder coating of
titanium diboride having the claimed oxygen content from the
process suggested by the applied prior art references, i.e.,
plasma spraying of a 100% titanium diboride in an inert gas
chamber. See the Brief in its entirety.
The appellants argue that the applied prior art references
do not teach or suggest the claimed spray powder having a mean
particle size of 10 to 55 microns. See. e.g., the Brief, page 4.
We do not agree.
As indicated supra, Mill teaches that spray powder particles
sizes are a result effective variable in a plasma spray coating
process. See In re Woodruff, 919 F.2d 1575, 1578, 16 USPQ2d
1934, 1936-37 (Fed. Cir. 1990) (when the difference between the
claimed invention and the prior art is some variable within the
claims, the appellants must show that the particular variable is
critical); In re Boesch, 617 F.2d 272, 276, 205 USPQ 215, 219
(CCPA 1980)(the optimization of result effective variables is
well within the ambit of one of ordinary skill in the art).
Thus, we conclude that it would have been prima facie obvious to
employ the optimum plasma spray particle sizes, such as those
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