Appeal No. 2000-1516
Application 08/897,337
The examiner acknowledges that Knight does not disclose the
appellants’ phospholipid or silicon quaternary (answer, page 4),
and argues (answer, page 7):
[T]he use of other softening agents in view of [the]
Knight et al. teaching would have been obvious to one
of ordinary skill in the art, since the softening
agents such as the quaternary surfactants taught by
Knight et al. are recognized in the art as mutually
exchangeable with the softener agents claimed by the
applicants, i.e., Phospholipids and silicon quaternary.
The mutually [sic] exchangeability is recognized by
applicants in page 2, line 14 through page 3, line 6.
The examiner, however, has not established that the
exchangeability of the softening agents indicated by the portion
of the appellants’ specification relied upon by the examiner,
which pertains to the appellants’ invention, was known in the
art. Moreover, the examiner has not established that this
exchangeability of softening agents indicates an exchangeability
of release agents having a softening property, which is what
Knight uses in his method.
We therefore conclude that the examiner has not carried the
burden of establishing a prima facie case of obviousness of the
methods recited in the appellants’ claims 6 and 7.
7
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