Appeal No. 2005-2304
Application No. 10/127,555
have fairly suggested, to one of ordinary skill in the art, any
attainable rate in that range, such as the rates recited in the
appellants’ claims 1 and 2.
The appellants argue that their specification, page 2,
lines 20-25 and 31-34, page 3, lines 1-15, and page 6, lines 17-
21, provides evidence of unexpected results relative to the prior
art range (brief, pages 4-7; reply brief, page 3). The
relied-upon portions of the specification disclose that 1) a
cooling rate substantially higher than 50°C/min strongly reduces
the thermal expansion coefficient of Invar® type shadow masks,
and 2) cooling rates of about 500°C/min and 2000°C/min reduce the
thermal expansion coefficient by, respectively, about 20% and
about 35% for Invar® type shadow masks. Ryoji, whose shadow mask
also is made of Invar® (page 2), shows in tables 1 and 2 that
over the entire exemplified cooling rate ranges, the thermal
expansion coefficient decreases as the cooling rate increases.
One of ordinary skill in the art, therefore, would have expected
the thermal expansion coefficient to continue to decrease as the
cooling rate is further increased. Consequently, the appellants’
evidence shows expected results rather than unexpected results.
“Expected beneficial results are evidence of obviousness of a
claimed invention, just as unexpected beneficial results are
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