Appeal No. 2003-2003
Application No. 09/746,474
subject matter is adequately represented by independent claim 1
which reads as follows:
1. An article having on at least a portion of its surface a
coating having the color of nickel comprising:
at least one basecoat layer comprised of nickel;
color layer comprised of refractory metal nitride or
refractory metal alloy nitride wherein the nitrogen content of
said refractory metal nitride or refractory metal alloy nitride
is a substoichiometric amount of from about 6 to about 45 atomic
percent.
The references set forth below are relied upon by the
examiner as evidence of obviousness:
Moysan, III et al. (Moysan ‘233) 5,552,233 Sep. 3, 1996
Moysan, III et al. (Moysan ‘972) 5,626,972 May 6, 1997
Welty et al. (Welty) 6,132,889 Oct. 17, 2000
Meckel 6,196,936 Mar. 6, 2001
(filed Jul. 25, 1997)
Claims 1-7 and 12-14 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a)
as being unpatentable over Welty and Meckel; claims 8 and 9 are
correspondingly rejected over these references and further in
view of Moysan ‘972; and claims 10 and 11 are correspondingly
rejected over Welty and Meckel and further in view of Moysan
‘233.1
1 In the “GROUPING OF CLAIMS” section of the brief, the
appellants state that “[a]ll the claims on appeal stand or fall
together” (brief, page 3). For this reason and because
separately rejected dependent claims 8-11 have not been
separately argued by the appellants, we will focus on claim 1,
(continued...)
2
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