Appeal No. 2003-0577
Application No. 09/194,378
In this case, neither the suggestion nor the reasonable
expectation of success is founded in the prior art.
Specifically, the examiner has not identified the evidentiary
basis for asserting that one of ordinary skill in the art would
have been led to “extrusion coat the film of Cardinal to the
polyolefin nonwoven webs of Brown and Weinberger.” (Answer,
page 4.) As pointed out by the appellants (appeal brief, page
3), Cardinal teaches that the thermoplastic films demonstrate
good adhesion to substrates made from materials containing
certain functional groups that react with the reactive groups on
the thermoplastic film, e.g. substrates including melamine. By
contrast, the polyolefin nonwoven webs of Brown and Weinberger
have not been shown by the examiner to contain any functional
groups, much less functional groups that are reactive to the
types of reactive groups described for Cardinal’s thermoplastic
film.
While the examiner alleges that one of ordinary skill in
the art would have known that Cardinal’s thermoplastic film can
be adhered to a polyolefin substrate and that reactive bonds
would not be necessary for diapers (answer, pages 5-6), such
unsupported statements are based on speculation rather than fact
or objective evidence. In re Lee, 277 F.3d 1338, 1343, 61
USPQ2d 1430, 1433 (Fed. Cir. 2002) (“‘The factual inquiry
8
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007