Appeal No. 2005-0960
Application No. 10/053,166
1. A rubber mixture comprising
a) one or more carboxylated nitrile rubbers
b) one or more metal salts of an acrylate
c) one or more liquid acrylates optionally applied
onto a support,
d) from 0.01 to 8 phr of one or more silanes, and
e) optionally further additives and/or fillers.
The references set forth below are relied upon by the
examiner as evidence of obviousness:
Hert et al. (Hert) 5,985,392 Nov. 16, 1999
Fujii et al. (Fujii) EP 0 933 381 A1 Aug. 4, 1999
(published European Patent Office Patent Application)
Claims 1-8 and 11 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as
being unpatentable over Hert in view of Fujii.1 On page 4 of the
answer, the examiner describes his position as follows:
Since peroxides are used to cure the carboxylated
nitrile rubber compositions in Hert . . . , one of ordinary
skill in the art, having read both references, would have
found it obvious to use polyfunctional crosslinking co-
agents in the composition of Hert . . . , and the skilled
artisan would have expected such an embodiment to work. One
would be motivated to modify the art because Fujii . . .
1On page 2 of the brief, the appellant states that “[n]one
of Claims 1-8 or 11 will be argued separately . . . ” and that
“[t]herefore, Claims 1-8 and 11 stand or fall together.” In
light of these statements, we will focus on representative claim
1, the broadest claim on appeal, in assessing the merits of the
above noted rejection.
2
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