Appeal No. 1995-4855
Application No. 08/146,334
1 of Rao does not support appellants’ argument that the water
washing of Christoph results in low amounts of alkali metal
content but leaves high amounts of other ash components
(Request, page 3). Rao discloses, as set forth in the
Examples in column 5 and Table 1 in columns 5-6, that the ash
content of water-washed carbon supports is 0.55%, which is
very similar to the limitation of claim 1 on appeal of “an ash
content less than 0.5 weight percent”. As previously 4
discussed, Leicester teaches a water wash of the carbon
support “advantageously acidified by addition of hydrochloric
acid” (page 1, right column, lines 7-9). Accordingly, if a
water wash would have been expected to lower the ash content
of carbon supports to such low values, as taught by Rao, the
additional advantageous acid treatment taught by Leicester
would reasonably have been expected to produce ash contents
within the claimed range.
Appellants’ second point is that the process of preparing
the carbon support as taught by Leicester would not be
4Of course, this final ash content would vary based on the
initial ash content of the carbon (see the specification, page
12, lines 16-28).
4
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