Appeal No. 95-1948
Application 08/090,854
limited to the features argued by the appellants and therefore do
not appear to be limited to the problem/solution which the
appellants have described in their specification. In any event,
it is a well settled general rule that merely discovering and
claiming a new benefit of an old process cannot render the
process again patentable even when the claimed process may not be
entirely old. In re Woodruff, 919 F.2d 1575, 1578, 16 USPQ2d3
1934, 1936 (Fed. Cir. 1990).
Finally, with regard to the appellants’ general reference to
?unexpected improved results? (Brief, page 4), we point out that
the record of this appeal contains no evidence that the results
achieved by a process of the scope defined by the independent
claims are different, much less unexpected, relative to the
results achieved by the process of Erickson.
For the reasons set forth above and in the Answer, we hereby
sustain the examiner’s § 103 rejection of claims 1, 3 through 11
and 13 through 18 as being unpatentable over Erickson.
The decision of the examiner is affirmed.
3 We here emphasize that the appellants have not contested in their Brief
the examiner’s obviousness conclusion with respect to the photosensitizer amounts
defined by the independent claims on appeal.
4
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