Appeal No. 2004-2111
Application No. 09/535,550
Atlas Powder Co., id. Therefore, we likewise hereby sustain the
examiner’s aforementioned section 103 rejection based on JP ‘673.
On the other hand, the section 103 rejection of claims 7 and
26 based on JP ‘740 cannot be sustained. Each of these claims
requires a phosphorous concentration of less than 0.005 weight
percent. Significantly, the reference under consideration does
not disclose phosphorous as an impurity like the other references
applied by the examiner but instead teaches that the alloys
thereof should contain phosphorous as a sintering acceleration
element in amounts which are far outside the here claimed range
(e.g., see the Abstract as well as pages 8 and 15 of the
translation copy). There is no prima facie case of obviousness
under these circumstances for the phosphorous concentration
defined by claims 7 and 26. Again, see In re Sebek, 465 F.2d at
906-07, 175 USPQ at 95.
As for the other claims rejected over JP ‘740, this
reference expressly teaches or at least would have suggested
alloy embodiments which correspond to those embraced by these
other claims including argued claim 4. More specifically, the
reference teaches alloys containing a boron concentration of 0.5
weight percent (e.g., see the Abstract) which fully corresponds
to the 0.5 weight percent embodiment encompassed by this argued
9
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007