Appeal No. 2006-0778
Application No. 10/266,917
Timm, Administrative Patent Judge, concurring.
There are two rejections on appeal, an anticipation
rejection and an obviousness rejection. My colleagues sustain
only the obviousness rejection. I would sustain the rejection
based upon anticipation by Goulat as well as the obviousness
rejection. The crux of our disagreement lies in the
significance of the word “spunlaced” in claim 1 and the
threshold burden the Examiner must meet to show anticipation.
I, like the Examiner, view “spunlaced” as a process
limitation within the claim. According to Appellants, “[a]
spunlaced fabric is a fabric which has been formed by impinging
a web (which can include preformed fabrics, spunmelt webs, air
laid webs and carded webs) with jets of high pressure water.”
(specification, p. 2, ll. 13-17). Basically, a spunlaced fabric
is a fabric that is hydroentangled (specification, p. 4, l. 34
to p. 5, l. 2 (“[n]on-interbonded fibers in a fibrous web of
material are entangled to form a plurality of loop structures by
directing one of more jets of high-pressure water at the fibrous
web of material.”)). Moreover, the amount of fiber entanglement
due to spinlacing is variable (specification, p. 5, ll. 27-30
(“The degree of fiber entanglement provided by water jet
impingement can control the degree to which the fabric fuzzes
after repeated peels from a hook member.)).
The claims are directed to a loop component. This is a
structural article. As such, it is the patentability of the
product defined by the claim, rather than the process for making
it that we must gauge in light of the prior art. In re Brown,
459 F.2d 531, 535, 173 USPQ 685, 688 (CCPA 1972). Spinlacing is
a process resulting in an entangled nonwoven. Goulat describes
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