Appeal No. 2003-0059
Application 09/238,553
materials being paper and polymer (col. 3, line 53 - col. 4,
line 3).
As argued by the appellant (brief, page 7), each of the
appellant’s independent claims requires that the paper stock
material is reactive to a heat source for developing indicia in
the paper stock material. The examiner argues that this
requirement relates to a method of production and, therefore,
cannot serve to patentably distinguish the claimed product
(answer, page 5). The reactivity to a heat source for the
development of indicia, however, is a characteristic of the paper
stock material which is part of the claimed product. Thus, the
examiner’s argument is not well taken. The lack of an
explanation as to why the applied prior art would have fairly
suggested, to one of ordinary skill in the art, a paper stock
material which is reactive to a heat source for the development
of indicia is a fatal deficiency in the examiner’s rejection.
Moreover, the examiner argues (answer, page 4) that it would
have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to make the
Freedman ‘165 second layer out of Eckberg’s UV curable
epoxysilicone polymer because Freedman ‘165 discloses using
UV curable material to break the bond at the interface between
the first and second polymer layers (col. 5, lines 27-34) and
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