Appeal No. 2003-2003
Application No. 09/746,474
Meckel do not satisfy the nickel color requirement of claim 1.
It appears, therefore, that the appellants’ position amounts to
nothing more than the observation that patentee does not use the
word “nickel” in his description of color which is
indistinguishable from the here claimed color. Such an
observation, though factually accurate, simply does not militate
against a nonobviousness conclusion.
We also share the examiner’s view that the appellants have
erroneously characterized Meckel as teaching the use of excess
nitrogen for each of the color coatings including the lustrous
gray and silver color coatings disclosed in lines 2-9 of column
8. As correctly explained by the examiner, patentee’s teaching
of excess nitrogen relates only to providing a greenish tinge to
the champagne color of a zirconium nitride coating. It follows
that the appellants are factually incorrect in arguing that
Meckel teaches “doing just the opposite of what Appellant has
[sic, Appellants have] done, i.e., using excess nitrogen rather
than using Appellants’ substoichiometric amount of nitrogen”
(brief, page 10).
With respect to the here claimed requirement that the color
layer contain a substoichiometric amount of nitrogen, we remind
the appellants that, generally speaking, it would have been
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