Appeal No. 2006-1946
Application No. 10/437,580
in the game.2
The appellant argues that a thermochromic agent would not
provide a hockey puck with Douglas’ desired proper performance
over a wide temperature range (brief, page 11). That is correct.
However, Kennedy’s disclosures that another small, polymeric
object that is struck during play, i.e., a golf ball, must be at
an optimum temperature for playing, and that lowering a polymer’s
temperature stiffens the polymer (¶¶ 0019-0020), would have
fairly suggested, to one of ordinary skill in the art, the
alternative approach of assuring that a hockey puck is within the
temperature range for proper stiffness by placing Kennedy’s
thermochromic section on the hockey puck. Further evidence in
support of the combination is the closeness of the upper suitable
hockey puck temperature (below about 59°F) indicated by the
appellant’s claim 1, and the lower limit of Kennedy’s optimum
golf ball temperature range (“about 15 to about 35°C” [59 to
95°F] (¶ 0020)).
The appellant argues that Douglas’ disclosure that when
2 The appellant states that the “procedure of cold storage of the pucks is almost always the practice at the
professional and college level of hockey” (specification, page 2, lines 2-3). The appellant does not state
whether it was almost always the practice to replace warmed up pucks with frozen ones when play has
been stopped.
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