Appeal No. 95-0678
Application 07/938,960
Regarding claim 4, the examiner argues that the use of whole
ground guar would be substantially the same as using guar gum
because the properties of the seed coating would be the same
(answer, page 9). Appellant does not challenge the examiner’s
argument but, rather, states that he does not find that the guar
gum disclosed by Redenbaugh is properly described as ground guar
and does not find it described as the principal ingredient in the
coating (brief, page 13). Hinkes’ disclosure that the precoating
material can be a vegetable gum (col. 3, lines 30-33) indicates
that the gum is the principal ingredient of the precoating.
Although the references do not disclose use of ground guar, in
our view the teaching by Redenbaugh that guar gum is a suitable
seed coating material (col. 4, lines 66-67) would have fairly
suggested, to one of ordinary skill in the art, that ground guar
including the gum also would be an effective coating material.
As for claims 6 and 7, the examiner argues that determining
the weight of coating as a percentage of the seed weight would be
optimization of a process parameter (answer, page 5). Appellant
argues that Hinkes limits the weight to 7% and that Redenbaugh
does not indicate the weight (brief, page 14).
The amount of the first coating disclosed by Hinkes is about
0.5 to 5.0 wt% of the coated seed (col. 3, lines 17-19). This
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