Appeal No. 2004-0027 Page 10 Application No. 09/513,089 OTHER ISSUES By way of Reply Brief, Appellants bring to our attention a Canadian patent application CA 2,247,657. This document was published September 17, 1998, more than one year before the U.S. filing date of the present application, i.e., February 25, 2000. The Canadian document is, thus, available as prior art under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b). Upon further prosecution, the Examiner should consider rejecting claims 5 and 6 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over the Canadian document in combination with prior art describing the specifics of flame-lamination. The Canadian document describes a process for producing a hydrophilic polyester- polyurethane foam which appears to meet all the requirements of the foam of claim 5 (p. 4, l. 14 to p. 5, l. 9). We are cognizant of the fact that claim 5 requires that the ethoxylated polyether polyol have a molecular weight greater than 700 and that the Canadian document does not disclose the molecular weight of the ethoxylated polyether polyol described therein. The Examiner should, therefore, determine whether there is reason to conclude that the ethoxylated polyether polyol described by the Canadian document inherently has a molecular weight within the required range. We call to the Examiner’s attention Example 1 of the Canadian document which describes a hydrophilic polyester-polyurethane foam having all the same ingredients as Example 1 of the specification. The polyether polyol is VP PU 41WB01 in both cases. If it is reasonable to conclude that VP PU 41WB01 inherently has a molecular weight within the claimed range, then the burden shifts to Appellants to prove that there is, in fact, a difference.Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 NextLast modified: November 3, 2007