Appeal 2007-2421
Application 10/289,793
roll must be included in the tank. Based upon the evidence presented,
we credit the testimony of Mr. Kawamura and Mr. Taguchi and find
that a person of ordinary skill in the art would understand that a
conventional tank, such as that described in Kawamura, includes a
submersed support roll. We reverse the Examiner’s rejections of
claims 1-18 as the Examiner has failed to demonstrate that the prior
art teaches or renders obvious a hot-dip metal strip process that
employs a tank that lacking a submersed support roll.
ii) The Rejection of Claim 19
Claim 19 is directed to a hot-dip metal strip process where the
metal strip is contacted with a single submersed support roll and then
taken out of the molten metal bath.
The Examiner found that, except for the use of a single
submersed support roll, Nakagawa taught all the limitations of claim
19. The Examiner found that the use of a single, as opposed to
double, submersed support roll was conventional in the hot-dip metal
strip processing art. (Answer, page 9). The Examiner further found
that one of skill in the art could implement a conventional single
submersed support roll in the process of Nakagawa. JFE identifies
Nakagawa as employing two support rolls but did not contest the
Examiner’s finding that the use of a single submersed support roll was
conventional in the hot-dip metal strip processing art.
We affirm the Examiner’s rejection of claim 19. Specifically,
we find that claim 19 represents a combination of familiar elements of
the prior art according to known methods to yield predictable results.
Anderson's-Black Rock v. Pavement Co., 396 U.S. 57, 61, 163 USPQ
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