Appeal No. 95-0658
Application No. 08/069,456
The examiner has an initial burden of establishing that
one of ordinary skill in the art would have found the claimed
invention to have been obvious at the time that it was made,
including all of the recited limitations. The evidence relied
upon must support such a conclusion. In this instance we
cannot agree with the examiner that the cited art provides the
disclosure required to conclude that the claimed methods would
have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the
time the invention was made, thus we are constrained to
reverse the rejection on this record.
None of the references teach an appropriate range for the
storage pH which can be compared to the claimed narrow range.
Each of the three independent claims require the following as
a last step:
then placing the fruit pieces directly in a
non-freezing refrigerated environment at a pH
of about 3.0 to 3.2 for storage.
The specification refers to this limitation on page 8, lines
1-8, of the specification, and states:
Applicant believes that there is a synergistic
interaction between the malic acid and the sulfur
dioxide of the aqueous preservative solution which
serves to maintain the pH of the apples during
storage in a low range of about 3.0-3.2 to allow
5
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007