Appeal 2006-2523
Application 10/206,496
Background of the Invention and the teachings of Adachi with Appellants’
countervailing evidence of and argument for nonobviousness and conclude
that the claimed invention encompassed by appealed claims 1 through 10,
13, and 15 through 20 would have been obvious as a matter of law under
35 U.S.C. § 103(a).
Turning now to the rejection of claim 11 over the combined
knowledge of prior art methods in the Background of the Invention and the
teachings of Adachi and Atarashi, the Examiner contends that Atarashi
would have disclosed to one of ordinary skill in this art, spherical particles
of certain metals are coated by sol-gel methods, leading this person to use
the particles for substrate particles in the prior art processes (Answer 7-8).
Appellants contend that there is no suggestion of the benefit of combining
the teachings of the references and the Background of the Invention and the
combination would result in the formation of a gel in solution (Br. 28).
We find Adachi would have taught providing a metal oxide coating on
spherical metal oxide substrate particles, wherein the metal particles include
iron oxide and cobalt oxide (Adachi, e.g., col. 5, ll. 11-14). Atarashi would
have taught forming a metal oxide film by hydrolysis of a metal alkoxide,
including titanium alkoxides and silicon alkoxides, on inorganic substrate
particles, including iron and aluminum as well as alloys thereof (Atarashi,
.e.g., cols. 2-4).
We determine that one of ordinary skill in the art would have
combined the prior art polymerization coating methods described in the
Background of the Invention, Adachi and Atarashi and thus, would have
been led to use the coating methods with the metal substrates taught therein.
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