Appeal No. 2005-1492
Application No. 10/082,375
First, the claim merely requires that the washing, rinsing
and drying steps be “under tension” and does not exclude use of
rollers. Second, as logically determined by the examiner, the
tension applied to the tubing by Ostrowski’s take-off device
(e.g., see lines 26-34 in column 5) would necessarily be present
during patentee’s washing, rinsing and drying steps due to
the fact that the tubing is a continuous length from a point
preceding the aforementioned steps to the take-off device (e.g.,
see Figure 1 and the specification disclosure relating thereto).
Concerning the rejection based on Ostrowski, Maddox and
Asai, the appellants argue that no basis exists for combining the
teachings of these references. In particular, the appellants
urge that “it would be counterintuitive to combine the teachings
of Asai that no solvents or water are required, with the
teachings of either Maddox or Ostrowski [who use solvents or
water] to arrive at the appellants’ claimed invention” (Brief,
page 8). This argument is unpersuasive for a number of reasons.
First, the combined teachings of these references support
the examiner’s conclusion that it would have been obvious to use
the modified Ostrowski-Maddox process discussed above for coating
materials such as non-metallic cable because Asai generally
evinces that the prior art included such materials having
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