Appeal 2006-2603
Application 10/270,486
We have thoroughly reviewed Appellants' arguments in their Request.
However, we remain of the opinion that it would have been obvious for one
of ordinary skill in the art to employ IR compensation, or compensation for
voltage drop, that was admittedly known to occur across the electrolyte
solution of an electrochemical cell, in an anodization process of the type
claimed. As stated in our opinion, "Galwey expressly teaches that the
distortion caused by the voltage drop across the solution can be appreciable
and preclude any meaningful interpretation of the data to the extent that the
actual driving potential would be masked by the unknown voltage drop"
(col. 3, ll. 38-44) (page 5 of decision, first para.).
Appellants emphasize that "electrocoating" is a process that "is not in
any way equivalent to or related as a 'species' to Appellants' claimed
anodization process" (page 3 of Request, first para.). However, it is not
necessary for our agreement with the Examiner’s legal conclusion, that the
claimed process would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art,
that the claimed anodization process is generic to electrocoating. We say
this because the known voltage drop that occurs across an electrolyte
solution that is discussed by Galwey and Electrochemistry Dictionary is not
peculiar to electrocoating processes. The problem of voltage drop across an
electrolyte solution is present in any process that passes a current through
the electrolyte. Since voltage drop across an electrolyte solution was a
known problem in the art, as was the solution of compensating for the
voltage drop, we are confident that one of ordinary skill in the art would
have found it obvious to compensate for the voltage drop in Appellants'
anodization process. We find that one of ordinary skill in the art would have
been motivated to compensate for the voltage drop in the known anodization
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Last modified: September 9, 2013