Appeal No. 1996-1284
Application No. 08/084,685
appellant's modifier, tetramethylethylenediamine, would have
been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art in view of
the prior art's use of dimethylethylamine as a polymerization
modifier.
Appellant maintains that "the claimed process which
employs a tertiary diamine is not suggested by the naming of
tertiary amines or even specific tertiary amines which are not
diamines" (page 3 of Reply Brief, emphasis added). However,
it is well settled that, on the issue of structural
obviousness, the prima facie case of obviousness arises from
the reasonable expectation that compounds that are very
similar in structure will have similar properties. In re
Hoch, 428 F.2d 1341, 1343-44, 166 USPQ 406, 409 (CCPA 1970).
In the present case, it is our view that the claimed
diamine is sufficiently similar in structure to the tertiary
amines disclosed by GB '490 that one of ordinary skill in the
art would have reasonably expected that the claimed diamines
would be a suitable modifier in the polymerization process of
Van Amerongen. Our view is consistent with the examiner's
rationale set forth on page 7 of the Answer and in the
examiner's response to appellant's Reply Brief (Paper No. 15).
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