Ex Parte Levit

Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences

Jan 21, 2010

10826530 (B.P.A.I. Jan. 21, 2010)

UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
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BEFORE THE BOARD OF PATENT APPEALS
AND INTERFERENCES
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Ex parte MIKHAIL R. LEVIT
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Appeal 2009-006965
Application 10/826,530
Technology Center 1700
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Decided: January 21, 2010
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Before BRADLEY R. GARRIS, CHARLES F. WARREN, and
TERRY J. OWENS, Administrative Patent Judges.

OWENS, Administrative Patent Judge.

DECISION ON APPEAL
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
The Appellant appeals under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Examiner’s
rejection of claims 1-14. Claims 15-30, which are all of the other pending
claims, stand withdrawn from consideration by the Examiner. We have
jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
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Application 10/826,530

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The Invention
The Appellant claims an aramid paper. Claim 1 is illustrative:
1. Aramid paper comprising 50 to 95 weight percent
p-aramid pulp and 5-50 weight percent of floc with an initial
modulus less than 3000 cN/tex.
The Reference
Ramachandran 5,833,807 Nov. 10, 1998
The Rejection
Claims 1-14 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 over
Ramachandran.1
OPINION
We affirm the Examiner’s rejection.
Issue
Has the Appellant shown reversible error in the Examiner’s
determination that Ramachandran would have rendered prima facie obvious,
to one of ordinary skill in the art, a p-aramid pulp in combination with a floc
having an initial modulus less than 3000 cN/tex?
Findings of Fact
Ramachandran discloses a wet-laid, dried aramid fiber sheet
comprising at least one of aramid pulp and aramid floc (col. 4, ll. 3-6). The
aramid pulp can be a p-aramid pulp (poly(p-phenylene terephthalamide),
col. 4, ll. 38-39) and the aramid floc can be NOMEX (col. 4, ll. 21-24)
which, the Appellant states, has an initial modulus of about 800 cN/tex

1 Rejections of claims 1-14 under 35 U.S.C. §§ 102(b) or 103 over
US 2002/0142689 to Levit and under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b) over
Ramachandran are withdrawn in the Examiner’s Answer (Ans. 4).
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(Spec. 9:4-5). Ramachandran is silent as to the relative amounts of aramid
pulp and aramid floc.
Analysis
The Appellant argues (Br. 6):
Ramachandran not only does not disclose or suggest any ratio of floc
and pulp; it does not even disclose or suggest a combination of
p-aramid pulp with floc having a modulus below 3000 cN/tex.
Further, column 4, lines 3-10 of Ramachandran only speaks to the
concentration of fiber as it relates to dispersion in view of the pH
range (see column 3, lines 52-58).

Ramachandran’s column 3, lines 52-58 are as follows:
The kernel of this invention resides in adjustment of the pH of
the aramid fiber dispersion to greater than 10 to uniformly disperse
the aramid fibers. For reasons not entirely understood, aramid fibers
in water dispersion tend to agglomerate at pH’s up to about 10 and
tend to be repelled from each other and to become more completely
and more uniformly dispersed at pH’s of greater than 10.

That disclosure does not pertain to the relative amounts of aramid pulp and
aramid floc which, Ramachandran discloses at column 4, lines 5-6, can be
used together.
One of ordinary skill in the art, through no more than ordinary
creativity and routine experimentation, would have optimized the relative
amounts of aramid pulp and aramid floc for the uses of the aramid fiber
sheet disclosed by Ramachandran, i.e., “as substrates for printed circuit
boards, friction articles such as in clutch facing plates, thermal and electrical
insulation, structural core and honeycomb material, and the like” (col. 4,
ll. 11-14). See KSR Int’l. Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 418 (2007) (In
making an obviousness determination one “can take account of the
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inferences and creative steps that a person of ordinary skill in the art would
employ”); In re Woodruff, 919 F.2d 1575, 1578 (Fed. Cir. 1990); In re
Kulling, 897 F.2d 1147, 1149 (Fed. Cir. 1990). Those uses are essentially
the same as the Appellant’s disclosed uses of the Appellant’s aramid fiber
sheet, i.e., “as a basic material for honeycomb cores, a reinforcement for
printed circuit boards and other laminate structures, an electrical insulation
in oil or resin-filled systems, as a basic material for friction facings in
automotive industry, and in other applications of high performance
composite structures” (Spec. 2:14-18). Consequently, it appears that one of
ordinary skill in the art, when optimizing Ramachandran’s relative amounts
of aramid pulp and aramid floc, would have arrived at amounts within the
broad ranges arrived at by the Appellant and recited in the Appellant’s
claims.
Conclusion of Law
The Appellant has not shown reversible error in the Examiner’s
determination that Ramachandran would have rendered prima facie obvious,
to one of ordinary skill in the art, a p-aramid pulp in combination with a floc
having an initial modulus less than 3000 cN/tex.
DECISION/ORDER
The rejection of claims 1-14 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 over
Ramachandran is affirmed.
It is ordered that the Examiner’s decision is affirmed.
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No time period for taking any subsequent action in connection with
this appeal may be extended under 37 C.F.R. § 1.136(a).

AFFIRMED

kmm

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