Appeal No. 2006-1311
Application No. 10/101,177
not offer substantive arguments with respect to the rejection of
claims 12 and 14-16 over the admitted prior art in view of
Yoshitake and Moriga. Accordingly, all the appealed claims
stand or fall together with claim 7, and we will limit our
consideration to the examiner's rejection of claim 7 over the
admitted prior art in view of Yoshitake.
We have thoroughly reviewed each of appellants' arguments
for patentability. However, we are in complete agreement with
the examiner that the claimed subject matter would have been
obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art within the meaning
of § 103 in view of the applied prior art. Accordingly, we will
sustain the examiner's rejections for the reasons set forth in
the Answer, which we incorporate herein, and we add the
following for emphasis only.
There is essentially no dispute that the admitted prior art
described in appellants' specification discloses the claimed
process for producing an electrode/membrane assembly for a
polymer electrolyte fuel cell with the exception of the claimed
step of impregnating with a solution containing a solvent-
soluble fluorine-containing polymer having substantially no ion
exchange group to prepare a gas diffusion electrode. Appellants
appreciate that Yoshitake discloses providing a water repellent
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