Appeal No. 2002-1567 Page 4
Application No. 09/197,729
As essentially found by the examiner (answer, pages 3 and
4), Aylward, like appellants, discloses a photographic material
or element that includes a biaxially oriented thermoplastic
polyolefin polymer sheet (core) that includes microvoids.
Polymer layer(s) including the core voided sheet are laminated to
a paper base and are located below a silver halide containing
imaging layer as part of an underlayer support therefore. See,
e.g., the abstract, column 2, lines 10-39, column 3, lines 7-67,
column 5, line 66 through column 6, line 2, column 7, lines 34-42
and column 9, line 52 through column 10, line 21 of Aylward.
Given that Aylward teaches a voided sheet underlayer that
substantially corresponds in the manner of making and overall
structure to the voided sheet structure disclosed by appellants,
the examiner has determined that the voided sheets taught by
Aylward3 would reasonably be expected to possess the compression
3 The examiner additionally relies on Ashcraft (U.S. Pat.
No. 4,377,616) to show that the voided biaxially oriented sheet
of Aylward would be expected to possess the properties that
appellants’ claim their voided layer possesses. In this regard,
we observe that Aylward incorporates by reference the disclosure
of Ashcraft as well as two other patents in discussing the type
of voided sheets useful in Aylward and how they are manufactured.
Significantly, at page 3 of their specification, appellants point
to the same patents, including U.S. Patent No. 4,377,616 to
Ashcraft, as referred to by Aylward for a disclosure as to how
appellants’ micro voided sheets are formed.
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