Appeal No. 2003-0671 Page 6
Application No. 09/099,632
We agree with the appellants that it would not have been obvious to make the
first layer (the heat sink) of the Phillips heat exchanger of polymeric film. The appellant
has selected polymeric film because it can conform to contours and thus provide better
conductivity, and because it typically is less expensive than the materials used in the
prior art devices, can be accurately formed with a microstructured surface into flow
channels, has reduced thermal expansion and contraction characteristics, is
compression conformable into the contours of a substrate, is non-corrosive, thermo-
chromatic and electrically non-conductive, and has a wide range of thermal conductivity
(specification, page 9). In our opinion, these reasons constitute evidence that the
appellants’ selection of polymeric material in the form of a film from the multitude of
available materials was not merely “obvious design choice,” as the examiner has
opined. We also cannot agree with the examiner that the reduction of the thickness of
the Phillips’ “plate” to the point where it becomes a “film” falls within the purview of
obviousness to one of ordinary skill in the art. Phillips discloses a solid construction
and, as the appellants have pointed out on pages 22 and 23 of the Brief, the common
applicable definition of “plate” is a smooth, flat, relatively thin rigid body of uniform
thickness and “film” is a thin, generally flexible sheet of material. To substitute film for
the Phillips structure would necessitate a complete reconstruction of the disclosed
device, which would appear to substantially alter or destroy the Phillips invention and
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