Appeal No. 2004-1150
Application No. 09/924,490
In the present case, notwithstanding appellants’ arguments to
the contrary, we consider the Dawes disclosure to be of sufficient
clarity and force to put a skilled artisan in possession of the
presently claimed invention prior to appellants’ date of invention.
It follows that we consider Dawes to anticipate claims 1, 13, 18,
38 and 52. In this regard, we note again the statement found on
page 5 of the specification of the present application that “[t]he
application of this technique [i.e., friction stir butt welding] to
aircraft airframe structure . . . would not have been foreseen
owing to the aforesaid known properties of welds, namely liability
to fatigue.” It is our view, based on the totality of the Dawes
disclosure, that the skilled artisan, when in possession of the
teachings of Dawes, would have viewed the known properties of
friction stir welding to include: (1) the ability to join aluminum
alloys, a material favored by aircraft designers, to produce welds
that (2) are completely void and crack free, (3) have a tensile
strength that exceeds the strength of the base metal, and (4)
exhibit a fatigue performance far better than has been obtained
from several known arc welding techniques and comparable to that of
the base metal itself. Based on these known properties, we believe
the skilled artisan would have considered friction stir welding to
be a prime candidate for use in forming at least some structural
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