Appeal No. 2003-0391
Application 09/228,433
of foam layer or core 20, the examiner turns to Palmer’s
disclosure of a core 158 having intersecting longitudinal and
transverse grooves 160 and 162 on its upper surface to overcome
this deficiency in Louderback. Notwithstanding the appellants’
arguments to the contrary, Palmer’s teaching (see column 12,
lines 18 through 42; and column 13, lines 26 through 36) that
such grooves afford rapid and uniform impregnation of the plies
sandwiching the core would have provided the artisan with ample
suggestion or motivation to utilize intersecting longitudinal and
transverse grooves on the upper surface of Louderback’s core.
Indeed, Louderback’s statement that “grooves 60a can . . . extend
in longitudinal, transverse and/or other directions to distribute
resin” (column 5, lines 14 through 17) arguably would have
suggested the same thing. The examiner allows, however, that
even as so modified in view of Palmer, the Louderback process
would still lack response to the selective spacing of the lateral
resin distribution grooves required by claim 1. The examiner’s
reliance on Seemann to cure this shortcoming is unsound.
Seemann discloses a core 12 having on its surface 16 one or
more main feeder grooves 14 and a plurality of microgrooves 18
arranged transversely to the main feeder grooves. According to
Seemann, “[t]he cross-sectional area of the main feeder groove[s]
4
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