Appeal No. 2004-0049 Page 8
Application No. 10/047,626
inner cover and thus increase the coefficient of restitution of the inner cover and the golf
ball.
The appellant argues that there is no motivation, absent the use of impermissible
hindsight, for a person of ordinary skill in the art to have modified the inner cover 14 of
Nesbitt's golf ball from the teachings of Horiuchi and that the teachings of Horiuchi
would have made it obvious to have modified the outer cover 16 of Nesbitt's golf ball.
We do not agree. Nesbitt clearly teaches (column 2, lines 40-65) that the inner cover
14 of Nesbitt's golf ball is a hard, high flexural modulus resin which "is employed to
increase the coefficient of restitution in order to attain or approach the maximum initial
velocity for the golf ball" and that the outer cover 16 of Nesbitt's golf ball is a soft low
flexural modulus resin which "provides little or no gain in the coefficient of restitution."
In our view, Horiuchi's teaching to use a carboxyl-rich ionomer resin which contains
preferably 20 to 30% by weight of an alpha, beta-ethylenic unsaturated carboxylic acid
to significantly improve the properties of a golf ball, such as impact resilience and flying
performance, would have made it obvious at the time the invention was made to a
person of ordinary skill in the art to have modified the cover layer of Nesbitt's golf ball
that Nesbitt teaches should have the maximum coefficient of restitution (i.e., inner cover
14).
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