Appeal No. 2005-0711 Application No. 09/943,644 From these findings, the examiner concludes that it would have been obvious at the time of appellants’ invention to coat other TVE-PFCB polymers, such as those disclosed by Smith or Babb, using the coating and baking in a nitrogen atmosphere as taught by Smith or Babb, to the thicknesses disclosed as useful for PFCB polymeric waveguide cores by Fischbeck or Shacklette, using the high solids content solutions taught by Kennedy based upon the direction of Shah that the composition of the monomer solution can control the refractive indices, glass transition temperature and long term thermal stability (Answer, pages 8-9 and 10-11). The examiner also concludes that it would have been obvious to add an upper cladding layer, such as a PFCB copolymer cladding layer, to improve the waveguiding properties of the article with a reasonable expectation of success since Kaneko teaches that the same materials can be used for the core and cladding layers and Shah teaches control of the refractive indices by optimizing the monomer composition (Answer, pages 9-10 and 11-12). Appellants argue that there is no suggestion found in the references to process and utilize the known PFCB copolymer 5Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 NextLast modified: November 3, 2007