Appeal No. 95-4358
Application No. 08/052,212
Claims 1 to 13, 46 and 47 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103 as being unpatentable over Gravesteijn and Detty in view
of March.
After having reviewed the references in light of the
arguments raised by appellants, we find that we cannot sustain
these rejections for the reasons set forth in appellants'
Brief.
Appellants urge that the squaric acid derivatives of
formula II of claim 1 are novel and unobvious compounds as
shown by the allowance of claims to those compounds in
appellants' parent application, now U.S. Patent No. 5,231,190.
The claimed process prepares a known squarylium compound by
reacting the novel and unobvious squaric acid derivative of
formula II of claim 1 with a known heterocyclic compound.
Under these circumstances, we agree with appellants that the
claimed process is patentable. See
In re Ochiai, 71 F.3d 1565, 1570, 37 USPQ2d 1127, 1131 (Fed.
Cir. 1995); In re Brouwer, 77 F.3d 422, 425-26, 37 USPQ2d
1663, 1666 (Fed. Cir. 1995).
The examiner acknowledges that the prior art starting
compounds of Gravesteijn and Detty are not identical to
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