Appeal No. 2005-1130
Application No. 10/072,876
of ordinary skill in the art in view of the specification and
prior art. See In re Zletz, 893 F.2d 319, 321, 13 USPQ2d 1320,
1322 (Fed. Cir. 1989); In re Sneed, 710 F.2d 1544, 1548, 218 USPQ
385, 388 (Fed. Cir. 1983).
The appellants do not point out, and we do not find, any
disclosure in the specification which limits the term “non-
planar” such that it excludes Ruf’s upper and lower lamella ends
having horizontal and sloped portions. Hence, we find the
lamella claimed in the appellants’ claim 1 to be anticipated by
Ruf.
With respect to the rejection over Ruf in view of Sanford,
the appellants argue that those references are not combinable
because Ruf uses a straight line lamella tip to achieve high
paper quality (col. 4, lines 16-30), whereas Sanford uses grooves
from the upstream end to the downstream end to inhibit vortices
which would cause streaking of the web (col. 3, lines 20-26)
(brief, pages 14-16; reply brief, pages 4-5). One of ordinary
skill in the art, however, considering the references together,
would have recognized the tradeoff between the high paper quality
obtained by Ruf’s straight tip and the inhibition of vortices
obtained by Sanford’s grooves. Hence, the references in
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