Appeal No. 2006-2539 Page 8
Application No. 10/421,661
• claim 3, based on LaVon, Marsan, “and incorporated by reference Hartwell”4
(Examiner’s Answer, page 6);
• claim 5, based on LaVon (Examiner’s Answer, page 7); and
• claim 6, based on LaVon and Sabee5 (Examiner’s Answer, page 8).
In each case, the examiner relied on LaVon “for the same reasons as above,”
and cited additional evidence to show that the limitations of the dependent claims would
have been obvious. As discussed above, LaVon does not teach all of the limitations of
independent claim 1. The examiner has pointed to nothing in the additional references
as a basis for concluding that it would have been obvious to practice the method
disclosed by LaVon using a rigid polymer structure as that term is defined in the instant
specification. The rejections based on § 103 therefore suffer from the same deficiency
as the rejection based on § 102 and must be reversed for the same reason.
3. Rejections based on Andre and Chi
The examiner rejected claims 1, 2, 5, and 6 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as obvious in
view of Andre6 and Chi.7 Examiner’s Answer, page 4. The examiner reasoned that
Andre discloses a method of making pipes having an inner layer that can be
polybutylene terephthalate and an outer layer of vulcanized elastomer, where the layers
are connected by “a film 12 of polyurethane type adhesive (See column 1, lines 63-67;
column 2, lines 1-5). The pipe is advantageously manufactured by coextrusion.”
Examiner’s Answer, page 4. The examiner cited Chi as “teaching that a laminate can
4 Hartwell, U.S. Patent 3,881,489, issued May 6, 1975
5 Sabee, U.S. Patent 4,618,384, issued October 21, 1986
6 Andre, U.S. Patent 5,799,704, issued Sept. 1, 1998
7 Chi, U.S. Patent 4,251,591, issued Feb. 17, 1981
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