Appeal No. 2001-2457
Application No. 09/168,979
from a lower boiling fraction which contains cyclopentene and
hydrocarbon impurities, as required by the claims on appeal
(Answer, page 4).
The examiner concludes that it would have been obvious to
one of ordinary skill in the art “to initially distill a
cyclopentene feed containing higher boiling point fraction in
order to obtain cyclopentene and impurities, including neo-
hexane, because the reference of EP 799881 A does not limit the
components separated from cyclopentene in the initial
distillation.” Answer, page 4. In other words, the examiner
considers the Kanne disclosure “to encompass initially
separating any fractions from cyclopentene.” Id.
Appellant argues that there are “huge” differences in the
initial distillation process of Kanne and the claimed invention
(Brief, page 7). Appellants argue that their first
distillation step separates neo-hexane from a fraction that
contains cyclopentene while Kanne is silent with regard to neo-
hexane as a starting feed material (Brief, pages 6-7).
Kanne fractionally distills a feed of a partially
hydrogenated pyrolysis gasoline to remove at a suitable plate a
high concentration of cyclopentane and cyclopentene (page 4,
ll. 10-16). The concentrations of cyclopentane and
4
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