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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