Appeal 2006-2551
Application 09/423,911
record, including due consideration of Appellants’ arguments, we determine
that the preponderance of evidence weighs most heavily in favor of
obviousness within the meaning of § 103(a). Therefore we AFFIRM the
rejections of claims 5 and 6 under § 103(a) over Daly alone or in view of JP
‘896.
B. The Rejection of Claims 7 and 8
The Examiner finds that Daly teaches an apparatus for hot rolling
aluminum comprising all the means recited in claim 7 on appeal except for
the heat treating means including a pusher type furnace with a pallet
transport system and a means for transferring the coil to the furnace (Answer
10). The Examiner applies Windhaus for the teaching of means for
transferring the coiled slab bundles to a pallet car and then using a pusher-
type pallet system for transporting the coils through the furnace (id.). From
these findings the Examiner concludes that it would have been obvious to
one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the invention to use the pusher
type pallet system and means for transferring the coiled slab to the pallet bar,
as taught by Windhaus, in the strip making plant disclosed by Daly, because
Windhaus teaches that this transporting system reduces the risk of
deformation of the bundles by the transporting means (id.).
Appellants argue that Daly fails to teach or suggest “means for finish
rolling the rough strip in a number of hot rolling passes so that [the] last of
the hot rolling passes occur without recrystallization in a temperature range
of 260ēC to a maximum of about 280ēC” (Br. 6-7). This argument is not
well taken for the reasons stated above. Furthermore, this argument is not
persuasive since the “means” disclosed by Daly is the same as claimed and
is capable of accomplishing the recited process limitation, i.e., the means of
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