Appeal No. 95-3765
Application No. 08/084,388
The requirements of appealed claim 1 and the examiner’s
analysis of Dunski have been discussed above. The examiner
states that Hirsch teaches the preparation of metal soaps by
reacting an excess of metal oxide with powdered fatty acids,
with the basis for this teaching of an excess of the metal
oxide being found in the examples (answer, page 4). Since
Dunski teaches that the fatty acid binder in the pellet may be
unreacted fatty acid from the saponification reaction (see
Example 5), and the examiner states that Hirsch teaches the
use of excess metal component in the saponification reaction,2
the examiner apparently concludes that use of both the fatty
acid and the metal oxide as binders would have been obvious to
the artisan (answer, page 5).
The examiner must show reasons why one of ordinary skill
in the art, confronted with the same problems as appellant and
with no knowledge of the claimed invention, would select the
2Although this statement by the examiner is not contested
by appellant, Hirsch specifically teaches the use of
stoichiometric amounts of each reactant (column 2, lines 2-4).
The examiner’s calculations for Example 11 (answer, page 4)
apparently do not take into consideration the particular range
of formulas possible in Formula (I) (column 1, lines 7-10).
However, this statement by the examiner does not affect our
decision.
7
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007