Appeal No. 2007-0412 Page 7
Application No. 10/195,609
1 (a) U.S. Patent No. 6,546,605, which Appellants assert includes claims to the
2 process that were filed in Appellants’ parent application and which were
3 found allowable over Willbanks ‘952 and Willbanks ‘733;
4 (b) Figure 14 of the Willbanks references which, when compared to Figure 4
5 of the instant application, is said not to show the steam contacting the
6 textile following impingement on the support surface; and,
7 (c) an affidavit of Dr. Charles E. Willbanks (filed in the course of prosecution,
8 on April 21, 2005, in response to the first Office action), the inventor
9 named in Willbanks ‘952 and Willbanks ‘733. The affidavit states (section
10 IX):
11 I believe that substantial process differences exist between the
12 process described in the above-referenced application [the
13 application under appeal] and those described in my U.S. patent
14 Nos. 5,080,952 and 5,235,733. It is my experience that the
15 interaction between a plurality of high pressure streams of liquid
16 and a textile substrate is difficult to predict, even given similar
17 substrates and similar processes, due in part to the role played by
18 the liquid after it passes through the substrate (e.g., the extent to
19 which the liquid builds up under the substrate at the point of stream
20 contact and the effect that build-up has on stream penetration, the
21 extent to which, and the circumstances under which, the stream is
22 re-directed outwardly following impingement on the support surface
23 and the effect that has on the shifting of yarns and fibers on and
24 within the substrate, etc.)
25
26 Accordingly, in my opinion, any inference that the characteristics of
27 substrates treated using these two different processes would be
28 necessarily similar, inherent to the process, or more to the point,
29 patentably indistinguishable, is both unwarranted and purely
30 speculative.
31
32 20. Appellants further argue that (Brief, p. 6):
33
34 [T]he teachings in the application, as, for example, those found in Table 3,
35 clearly show a performance difference between fabrics of the instant
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