Appeal No. 2006-0059 Page 6
Application No. 10/139,397
OPINION
Rather than reiterate the conflicting viewpoints advanced by the Examiner and
the Appellants regarding the above-noted rejections, we make reference to the
Answer (mailed July 12, 2005) for the Examiner's reasoning in support of the
rejections, and to the Brief (filed February 09, 2005) and the Reply Brief (filed August
16, 2005) for the Appellants’ arguments there against.
We have carefully reviewed the claims, specification and applied prior art,
including all of the arguments advanced by both the Examiner and Appellants in
support of their respective positions. This review has led us to conclude that the
Examiner's rejections under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) are not well founded. We will direct
our comments to claims 28 and 77, the independent claims on appeal.
Regarding the independent claims the Examiner asserts:
As to Claims 28 and 77, Bradshaw discloses removing the mask
substrate manually (column 6, lines 23-25), but does not disclose a
take-up roll. The problems associated with handling the mask layer, i.e.,
the user's hands becoming sticky as a result of touching the excess
adhesive on the mask layer and having that adhesive interfere with the
subsequent application of the selected substrate, would have been
readily apparent to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the
invention and that one of ordinary skill in the art would have been
motivated to search [for] a way to prevent or solve the problems
associated with manually removing the mask layer. It is well known and
conventional in the material handling apparatus art, as disclosed by
Roou (Figure 1, matrix take-up reel 34; column 3, lines 39-41) and Stahl
(Figure 1, waste film wind roll 30; column 2, lines 48-49), to provide a
take-up reel to remove an unwanted layer of waste material. It would
have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the
invention to modify the apparatus of Bradshaw to include a conventional
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007