In re Fullam

• Decision Date: 22 April 1947
• Docket Number: Patent Appeal No. 5269.
• Citation: 161 F.2d 247
• Parties: In re FULLAM et al.
• Court: U.S. Court of Customs and Patent Appeals (CCPA)

161 F.2d 247 (1947)

In re FULLAM et al.

Patent Appeal No. 5269.

Court of Customs and Patent Appeals.

April 22, 1947.

Keith Misegades, of New York City, for appellants.

W. W. Cochran, of Washington, D. C. (R. F. Whitehead and Joseph Schimmel, both of Washington, D. C., of counsel), for the Commissioner of Patents.

Before GARRETT, Presiding Judge, and BLAND, HATFIELD, JACKSON, and O'CONNELL, Associate Judges.

HATFIELD, Associate Judge.

This is an appeal from the decision of the Board of Appeals of the United States Patent Office affirming the decision of the Primary Examiner rejecting all of the claims (Nos. 1 to 9, inclusive) in appellants' application for a patent for an alleged invention relating to improvements in polishing systems.

Claims 7 and 8 are article claims, whereas the other claims define appellants' process.

Claims 2, 8, and 9 are sufficiently illustrative of the appealed claims. They read:

"2. The method of rendering invisible a patch in an unpolished baked resin finish which comprises rubbing the patch and the surrounding area with an abrasive which produces scratches filled with debris, and then eliminating the debris from the scratches by rubbing with a mixture of a liquid and a fine abrasive powder, characterized by the property that when the abrasive is mixed with fragments of the baked resin film and the mixture is wet with the liquid, the abrasive and film particles form joint flocculates.

"8. A base carrying a baked finish comprising essentially a urea-formaldehyde resin and an oil-modified alkyd resin, said finish containing fine scratches free from debris and indistinguishable in gloss from a smooth unscratched finish of the same material.

"9. Method of preparing a polishing composition capable of producing a glossy finish on heat-hardened resinous surfaces, which comprises selecting a combination of fine abrasive powder and vehicle which exhibits adhesion of the particles of abrasive powder upon fragments of a resinous material immersed in a mixture of said rubbing powder and vehicle, said resinous material being substantially identical in composition with the surface to be polished."

The references relied upon by the Primary Examiner are: Pierce, 1,774,665, September 2, 1930; Groven, 1,998,615, April 23, 1935.

The Primary Examiner rejected all of the claims as unpatentable over the cited references, and also as being functional and failing to define the invention as required by R.S. § 4888, U.S.C., title 35, sec. 33, 35 U.S.C.A. § 33. Claims 7 and 8 were further rejected "as being fully met by any baked urea formaldehyde resin coating which has been highly polished by means of a fine abrasive." The Board of Appeals reversed the Primary Examiner's rejection on the references, but affirmed the other grounds of rejection.

With reference to claims 7 and 8, the board also stated that "We think it is only common sense to remove debris from the scratches and the specific composition containing the scratches (claim 8) is immaterial."

Appellants' application relates to the polishing of resin finished surfaces. It is stated in the application that heat-hardened resin surfaces have certain desirable properties, but that it has not heretofore been possible to patch such surfaces so that the patch will be invisible. It is further stated that the difficulty is due to the fact that when the patch is polished, fine scratches are formed on its surface and minute particles of resin and abrasive remain in the scratches, thus giving the surface of the patch a hazy appearance. Appellants propose to remove the resin particles by polishing the surface of the patch with an abrasive material which forms agglomerates with the resin particles, and the agglomerates so formed are larger than the scratches and can, therefore, be removed from the surface. The application describes a test which may be made to determine what abrasive material will produce the desired agglomerates. Examples of polishing materials having the desired properties for use in connection with baked urea-alkyd resin surfaces are said to be chemically pure magnesium oxide, "which had been air floated," and standard commercial aluminum hydroxide.

The rejections of the claims as being functional and as failing to define the...