Ex Parte Booker - Page 7

                 Appeal 2007-0910                                                                                      
                 Application 10/108,807                                                                                

                        and into the water, which can then be discarded or filtered for                                
                        reuse. …                                                                                       
                        … recent developments in the area of spun-bonded fiber                                         
                        production have resulted in the creation of nonwoven fabrics                                   
                        with improved drape, hand, and moisture absorption                                             
                        characteristics ("hand" typically describes the tactile qualities of                           
                        a fabric such as softness, firmness, elasticity, etc.). For                                    
                        example, U.S. Patent Nos. 5,899,785 and 5,970,583, both                                        
                        assigned to Firma Carl Freudenberg, describe a spun-bonded                                     
                        nonwoven lap of very fine continuous filament and the process                                  
                        for making such nonwoven lap using traditional spun-bonded                                     
                        nonwoven manufacturing techniques. Such references disclose,                                   
                        as important raw materials, spun-bonded composite, or multi-                                   
                        component, fibers that are longitudinally splittable by                                        
                        mechanical or chemical action into microdenier size individual                                 
                        fibers. However, while this nonwoven production process                                        
                        may be cheaper and simpler than a comparable knitted or                                        
                        woven process, the fabric produced therein would likely need to                                
                        be processed at a cleanroom laundry to meet the                                                
                        requirements for end-use products, such as, for examples,                                      
                        wipers for a cleanroom or a paintroom.  [Emphasis added.]                                      
                        Given the advantage of employing nonwoven fabric wipes and the                                 
                 need for and recognition of removing ion contaminants via a deionized water                           
                 wash, we determine that one of ordinary skill in the art would have been led                          
                 to employ a deionized water wash in the nonwoven fabric wipes suggested                               
                 by the applied prior art references, motivated by a reasonable expectation of                         
                 successfully removing a desired amount of ion contaminants, such as those                             
                 claimed, for use as cleanroom wipers.  See KSR Int’l Co. v. Teleflex, Inc.,                           
                 127 S. Ct. at 1739, 82 USPQ2d at 1395 (“The combination of familiar                                   
                 elements according to known methods is likely to be obvious when it does                              
                 no more than yield predictable results.”).  This is especially true in this case                      


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