Appeal No. 94-2999
Application 07/672,286
Harandi or Feldman. According to the examiner, “[i]t would have
been obvious and within the purview of a routineer in the art to
sterilize the fermentation vessel of the primary reference
[Tegtmeier] with alcohol as the secondary reference [Heden]
teaches that alcohol is a known sterilant for fermentation
vessels” and that “[i]t would have been obvious to a routineer in
the art that the alcohol produced in the fermentation process
could have been used as the source of alcohol for the
sterilization” and that “[i]t would have been obvious to one of
ordinary skill in the art at the time the invention was made to
return the alcohol used to sterilize the reactor set forth above
to the distillation tower as such is known in the art as shown by
Harandi ... and Feldman ... to save on waste of the particular
stream and that this alcohol could then be returned to the
product stream for further processing as the chemical makeup of
the streams would be the same as the stream coming from the
fermentation step, only higher in alcohol concentration” (final
Office action, pages 3-4).
We will not sustain either of these rejections.
We fully share the appellant’s view that the § 112, first
paragraph, rejection of the appealed claims is improper for the
reasons fully detailed on pages 5 through 12 of the reply brief.
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