Appeal 2006-1080
Application 10/109,343
Claim 1 illustrates Appellants’ invention of a porous board or fibrous
material having a coating of petroleum pitch or coal tar pitch, and is
representative of the claims on appeal:
1. A porous board or fibrous material having a non-tacky surface
coating of less than 10 mil thickness of petroleum or coal tar pitch, and
wherein said pitch is a brittle, glassy non-asphaltic solid at ambient
temperature and at least a portion of said pitch penetrates into said porous
board or fibrous material, said pitch having a density of about 1.20g/cc or
greater, wherein the pitch has a softening point above 200F, is brittle as a
neat sample at room temperature, and is applied at conditions sufficient to
ensure a sufficiently thin coating and penetration of said coating into said
porous surface, to prevent shattering when screws, nails, staple or other
fastening means are driven into said porous board or fibrous material
wherein at least about 10% of the pitch penetrates into the porous board or
fibrous material.
The references relied on by the Examiner are:
Rothbühr US 4,154,808 May 15, 1979
Stern US 4,227,356 Oct. 14, 1980
Seitz US 4,788,803 Dec. 6, 1988
Lamport US 5,753,018 May 19, 1998
Rajalingam US 6,271,305 Aug. 7, 2001
Jackson UK 1 558 176 Jul. 7, 1976
(United Kingdom Patent Specification)
Robert H. Wombles and Melvin D. Kiser (Wombles), Developing Coal
Tar/Petroleum Pitches 1-5 (Koppers, Harmarville Technical Center. 2000).
The Examiner has advanced the following grounds of rejection on
appeal:
claims 1 and 22 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being obvious over Jackson in
view of Stern, as evidenced by Rajalingam, Lamport, Rothbühr and
Wombles (Answer 3-5);
2
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