Appeal 2007-1526
Application 11/035,534
within the meaning of § 103(a). Therefore, we affirm the obviousness
rejection of representative claim 79 and the claims grouped therewith.
Claims 6, 7, 82, and 83
Representative claim 6 further requires that the treatment of claim 79
is carried out for at least 10 seconds. Appellants additionally maintain that
Haruyuki’s disclosure of treatment times from 30 seconds to 3 minutes is not
shown to be attended by the new and unexpected results that the claimed
invention is alleged to be associated with. For reasons discussed above,
however, we do not find that Appellants have established unexpected results
for the claimed subject matter. Thus, we shall also affirm the Examiner’s
obviousness rejection as to claims 6, 7, 82, and 83.
Claim 21
Appellants maintain that the “same morphology” limitation for the
product implant surface added by dependent claim 21 patentably
distinguishes claim 21 from the teachings of Haruyuki. We disagree.
As argued by Appellants (Br. 13), the claim 21 “same” limitation in
question is inclusive of minor surface changes. Taking this construction of
claim 21 as being consistent with Appellants’ Specification and how that
claim would be understood by one of ordinary skill in the art, we determine
that one of ordinary skill in the art would have expected the implant surface
changes to be minor when low acid concentrations and treatment times are
employed based on the above-discussed teachings of Haruyuki. While we
agree with Appellants that Haruyuki does not describe or exemplify an acid
treatment process with such a “same” morphological result (Br. 13-15,
11
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