Appeal No. 2003-0878
Application No. 09/575,903
I. The Rejection of Claim 1
Appellants do not dispute that Kumar uses appellants’
claimed polysiloxane macroinitiator and radically polymerizable
onomers to produce block copolymers. See the bottom of page 12
of the Brief and the top of page 13 of the Brief.
Hence, the only issue before us is whether it would have
been obvious to have substituted the use of ultraviolet
radiation set forth in Kumar with the use of a catalytic amount
of a CuI salt (or other transitional metal species) when
reacting the organic halide groups of the polysiloxane
macroinitiator with radically polymerizable monomers, to form
the claimed polysiloxane block copolymer.
The examiner’s basic position is that it would have been
obvious to have substituted the ultraviolet energy source of
Kumar with the metal transition catalyst of Matyjaszewski to
induce radical polymerization as taught by Matyjaszewski. Paper
No. 7, page 3.
In response, on page 14 of the Brief, appellants argue the
following:
“Matyaszewski does not conclude that there is a need
for a method to prepare block and graft copolymers
that are well defined and free of homopolymer.
That method for alkyl monomers is the use of transition
metal catalyst polymers. While claim 1 of Matjasewski
doesn’t specifically state that alkyl monomers are being
used, those are the monomers that are being used in the
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