Appeal No. 2006-1850
Application 10/039,103
As the examiner has structured the rejection, we agree with the examiner’s
conclusion that it would have been obvious for the artisan to have utilized the particular
type of seal film in the McGrath in the Phillips-Response combination as argued at pages
5 and 6 of the answer. The examiner buttresses the reasons of combinability beginning in
the responsive arguments at page 7 of the answer where the examiner responds to all the
arguments raised beginning at page 6 of the principal brief on appeal.
Appellants’ arguments in the principal brief and reply brief generally focus upon
structural combinability issues rather than combining teachings as the above noted case
law requires. The Bernard patent mentioned at page 7 of the principal brief on appeal
and the paragraph bridging pages 5 and 6 of the reply brief is misplaced. All the
arguments in the brief and reply brief relating to any flexibility issues are inapplicable to
the claimed invention since they relate to a property not recited in these claims. The
Bernard patent is not part of the rejection as formulated by the examiner.
As to McGrath, this reference teaches two principal embodiments for “cellular
retroreflective sheeting” as set forth in the title of this patent. The initial paragraphs at
column 1 of McGrath relates to an embodiment based upon transparent micro-spheres to
which figures 1 through 4 of this reference are directed to improving the prior approaches
to manufacturing such sheeting. On the other hand, the discussion beginning at column
1, line 44 through line 58 relates to prior approaches to cube-corner sheeting to which
figures 5 through 8 are directed to improve upon prior manufacturing approaching. We
reproduce here this entire paragraph (on which the examiner relies in part) from column 1
of McGrath:
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