Appeal No. 2004-1144
Application No. 09/584,765
these limitations introduce new concepts relative to the original
disclosure and thus violate the written description requirement.
See In re Anderson, 471 F.2d 1237, 1244, 176 USPQ 331, 336 (CCPA
1973) and Ex parte Grasselli, 231 USPQ 393, 394 (Bd. App. 1983).
According to the examiner, the independent claim 33 negative
limitation “the intermetallic alloy does not contain a NiAlCo
ternary alloy” offends the written description requirement by
introducing new concepts into the appellant’s original
disclosure. In response, the appellant presents the following
argument on page 9 of the brief:
The specification discloses a seedlayer that
contain numerous ternary and quaternary intermetallic
alloys that do not contain a NiAlCo ternary alloy at
page 2, lines 5-23. Moreover, the specification lists
six compounds (Co10Ni40Al40Ti10, Ni48Al44Nb8, Cr10Ni40Al40Mo10,
Ni48Al42Nb12, Ni40Al50Ti10, and Ni40Al40Mo20) that do not
contain a NiAlCo ternary alloy at page 4, lines 19-20.
This argument is unpersuasive. As fully explained in the
answer, the negative limitation under review is not descriptively
supported merely because the subject specification discloses
specific seedlayer embodiments which do not contain a NiAlCo
ternary alloy. This is due to the fact that the limitation
introduces new concepts beyond these specific seedlayer
embodiments. The new concepts include the particular seedlayer
intermetallic alloys which are not the ternary alloy excluded by
8
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