Appeal 2007-0906
Application 10/445,238
reversible error in the Examiner’s obviousness rejection of claim 6. This is
because the Examiner has made a factual finding (Official Notice) that
abrading is a conventional (well- known prior art) technique for increasing
adhesion of one surface to another (Answer 4), which has not been denied
by Appellants in their Reply Brief. Furthermore, aside from the Examiner’s
erroneous reference to Appellants’ Specification for an alleged teaching
regarding equivalence between abrading and applying an adhesive, the
Examiner furnishes another rationale for the proposed modification of
Clarke. This additional rationale is based on the Examiner’s factual finding
that abrading is conventional coupled with Clarke’s teaching of optionally
using adhesives to increase bonding. In this regard, the Examiner maintains
that it would have been obvious to include the conventional abrading step in
Clarke to obtain an expected increase in adhesion (Specification 3 and 4).
With regard to this latter asserted basis for the modification of Clarke’s
process, Appellants do not present any persuasive arguments that are on
point. Moreover, it appears to be reasonable that one of ordinary skill in the
art employing an adhesive for increased bonding, as Clarke teaches, would
have been reasonably led to use such a noticed conventional abrading step
therewith to further increase the adhesion based on the increased surface
area associated with a bonding surface subjected to abrasion.
On this record, we affirm the Examiner’s obviousness rejection of
claims 1-13.
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