Appeal No. 2004-0572
Application 09/849,315
claims. While these representations may be relevant to the issue
of claim novelty, they are of questionable relevance to the issue
of obviousness under consideration. This is because the
teachings of Miller and Pignataro, when combined as proposed,
would have resulted in a method which would have formed stacks
of tire tread strips excluding sidewalls in rubber-to-rubber
configurations, which stacks would have avoided water
accumulation, in accordance with appealed claims 1 and 9.
With further regard to the claim 9 feature of avoiding
water accumulation, the appellant argues that “[t]he elimination
of mosquito breeding grounds [i.e., by avoiding water accumula-
tion] in outside bulk storage sites for reclaimable tire rubber
is a significant breakthrough in the art and this objective of
the invention . . . is not achieved by either cited reference”
(Brief, pages 12-13). This argument lacks convincing merit. It
is well known in the prior art that “old tire casings . . . often
collect stagnant water and serve as breeding grounds for
mosquitoes and other pests” (Miller, column 4, lines 38-42).
While the elimination of such breeding grounds clearly is
desirable, it is not at all clear that such elimination supports
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