Appeal No. 2004-2234
Application No. 09/881,361
In proposing to combine Shimazaki, Kochevar and Tarlow to
reject independent claims 1, 8 and 16, the examiner concludes
that it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the
art (1) to replace Shimazaki’s weight 11 with a plug made of a
deformable binder and a metal powder in view of Kochevar “in
order to simplify the assembly process by deforming the shape to
fit a cavity instead or requiring more precise dimensions to
ensure proper fitting” (main and supplemental answers, page 5)
and (2) to make such binder from a compliant polymeric material
which can be compression fitted into place in view of Tarlow
in order to have a plug which returns to the original
form when a stress is removed so that the plug is more
easily handled and stored without deteriorating, in
order to have a clean method of fixing a plug to a
cavity without the use of an adhesive, and in order to
be able to temporarily fix a plug to a cavity [main and
supplemental answers, page 5].
In responding to the arguments advanced in the appellants’
briefs, the examiner seems to take the additional approach that
the foregoing application of Tarlow “was not really needed” (main
and supplemental answers, page 11) because Kochevar discloses “a
binder containing a polymeric material in the form of
polyisobutylene . . . which is compliant in that it can be
compressively loaded . . . and is deformable” (main and
supplemental answers, page 11).
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