Appeal No. 2000-0119
Application 08/785,711
materials will form a more dense packing when disposed in land
fill operations.
It is our opinion that one of ordinary skill in the art
at the time of appellants’ invention would have immediately
recognized that other porous construction materials like those
mentioned in Grube would typically include brick and mortar waste
materials that are normally disposed of in land fill operations.
Moreover, we find that the ordinarily skilled artisan would have
recognized that brick is a porous “ceramic”1 material and that
brick has a porosity of from 10 to 80% by volume and, more
particularly, a porosity of from 20 to 50% by volume. In that
regard, we note that the Robinson article shows various bricks
having porosity in appellants’ claimed ranges. See particularly,
the “soft molded” bricks of Figure 2 in Robinson, the Riggs Hall
bricks of Figure 1, and the Froberg House bricks of Figure 3.
The Robinson article also notes in reference to Figure 1 that the
1 Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary, 9th Ed., 1985,
defines the term “ceramic,” when used as an adjective, as “of
or relating to the manufacture of any product (as earthenware,
porcelain, or brick) made essentially from a nonmetallic mineral
(as clay) by firing at a high temperature.”
10
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007