Appeal No. 2007-0048 Page 2
Application No. 10/234,608
In the Decision on Appeal the Board affirmed a rejection of claims
1-10 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 (a) over Lowry and Gibson and entered a new
ground of rejection of claims 11 and 12 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) over
Martin in view of Gray or Kim.
DISCUSSION
Claims 1-10 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable
over Lowry in view of Gibson.
In the Decision on Appeal, we found the “Examiner’s findings [ ]
sufficient to support a prima facie conclusion of obviousness” (p. 7). Those
findings included finding that Lowry discloses a door comprising a slat
assembly having a void and filling that void with a thermally insulative
material and that Gibson discloses using aerogel in making a panel of
microporous thermal insulation. We agreed with the Examiner’s conclusion
that “[o]ne of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to modify
the door of Lowry by using an aerogel as the thermal insulation material
within the void of Lowry’s slat assembly” (Decision on Appeal 7). We
found that “one of ordinary skill in the art would have reasonably expected
that selecting Gibson’s aerogel to fill the void within the slat assembly of
Lowry would provide the Lowry assembly with a thermal insulation
performance corresponding to the incorporated aerogel” (Decision on
Appeal 7).
Appellant argues that “[t]he claimed use of aerogel as an insulation
material in an overhead door has two advantages over mere insulation
effectiveness for the aerogel component: light weight … and exceptional
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