Appeal No. 95-2971
Application No. 07/742,260
such materials in the claimed process. The only disclosure, in any of the cited references,
relating to the addition of alcohols to konjac is found in Shimizu. However, that disclosure
relates to the use of alcohols in a crude konjac comminuting process and does not suggest
the addition of the alcohol to a konjac sol to cause the coagulation of glucomannan in a
process intended to result in clarified konjac. On the record before us, we find that the
examiner has failed to establish that the claimed method for the production of clarified
konjac would have been prima facie unpatentable over the references relied upon. We
therefore reverse the rejection of claims 11-13 under 35 U.S.C. § 103.
New ground of rejection
Claims 1 - 10 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as unpatentable over Sugiyama.
Sugiyama discloses a process (col. 3, Example 1) wherein a colloidal solution of
konjac in water is filtered through a nylon filter cloth and then a glass filter with suction to
remove insoluble materials. The filtrate is than dialyzed against distilled water. The
resulting solution is lyophilized to yield a "Purely white, cotton-like konjac mannan"
disclosed to have only a trace of nitrogen. Table 1 (col. 3) indicates that the resulting
konjac mannan is water soluble and gelable. This konjac mannan would reasonably
appear to meet the claim limitations of claim 1 as well as claims 4-6 directed to an
aqueous sol and claims 7-9 directed to an aqueous gel. The only characteristics not
explicitly disclosed by Sugiyama are the functional limitations regarding turbidity (claim 1)
and viscosity (claim 10).
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