Appeal No. 2003-1926 Page 14
Application No. 09/095,842
their opinion that the appellants’ specification disclosure should be interpreted as requiring the
presence of a non-ionic, non-fluorine-containing surfactant.
I simply do not believe that the record before us supports a determination that one having
an ordinary level of skill in this art would interpret the appellants’ specification in the manner
urged by the majority. Relevant to this issue is the fact that the specification teaches the use of
non-ionic, non-fluorine-containing surfactant as an exemplary technique for preparing the
appellants’ aqueous dispersion, vis-à-vis, “[t]he aqueous dispersion . . . of the present invention
can be prepared, for example, by emulsion-polymerizing VdF monomer or a monomer mixture
containing VdF under coexistence of the above-mentioned fluorine-containing surfactant in an
amount of not more than 1% by weight on the basis of water and a trace amount of the nonionic,
non-fluorine-containing surfactant” (specification, page 6, lines 17-24; emphasis added). This
teaching militates against the majority’s belief that non-ionic, non-fluorine-containing surfactant
is required in order to prepare the appellants’ claimed aqueous dispersions.
In support of this belief, my colleagues rely upon the specification disclosure (and
corresponding argument in the parent application) concerning the use of more than the here
claimed amount of fluorine-containing surfactant in order to form an aqueous dispersion of the
type defined by claims 6-11. However, this reliance is undermined by the fact that the disclosure
in question is expressly categorical. Specifically, the specification, page 3, disclosure referred to
by the majority (slip op., page 4) expressly states that particle size “[u]sually” (emphasis added)
tends to increase outside the here claimed parameters when using not more than 1% by weight of
Page: Previous 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007