Appeal No. 1997-0486
Application 08/417,290
recited in appellants’ claim 1 (specification, page 16, lines
29-32).
Cullinan does not disclose an EDTA concentration of
about 0.25 to about 3 g/l as required by appellants’
independent claim 1, or less than about 3 g/l as required by
appellants’
independent claims 12 and 21. The only concentration of the 1
EDTA disclosed by Cullinan is 8 g/l (col. 8, lines 27, 37
and 47).
Yamada discloses adding water, which has been treated to
render it antifungal, as a diluent for at least one of a
developing solution and a fixing solution, and also discloses
incorporating this water into washing water or a stabilizing
solution (col. 2, line 55 - col. 3, line 2; col. 7, lines 8-
11; col. 11, lines 12-15 and 17-21). One of the disclosed
ways for rendering the water antifungal is to add to it an
1 When we interpret appellants’ claims 12 and 21 as a
whole, we conclude that the claims require that the
conditioning solution includes three components, i.e., a
bleach accelerating agent, a formaldehyde precursor and an
antimicrobial agent. Thus, we interpret “said antimicrobial
agent being present in said conditioning solution in an amount
of less than about 3 g/l” as meaning that some antimicrobial
agent is present, but in an amount less than about 3 g/l.
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