Appeal No. 1996-0584
Application No. 07/658,878
a second annular surface surrounding and concentric with said first surface, a rotating
part having a third circular surface confronting said first surface and a fourth annular
surface surrounding and concentric with said third surface and confronting said second
surface, said first surface and said third surface having substantially the same shape and
defining a space therebetween having a substantially uniform thickness, said uniform
shear force generating field being disposed in said space, said second surface and said
fourth surface having substantially the same shape and defining a substantially uniform
gap therebetween in a range of about 1.8 mm or less;
(c) applying shear force to said disperse phase component and said continuous
phase component in said shear force generating field to form a dispersion having
droplets of desired size;
(d) removing said dispersion from said shear force generating field, wherein
substantially all of the dispersion passes through said gap;
(e) introducing said dispersion into a polymerization vessel; and
(f) completing a polymerization reaction to produce uniformly sized particles
having a narrow distribution.
The examiner relies upon the following reference as evidence of obviousness:
Vanzo et al. (Vanzo) 4,071,670 Jan. 31, 1978
ISSUES
Claims 1-8, 19-25, 27 and 29-33 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable
over Vanzo. We reverse.3
3 By an apparently inadvertent error on the examiner’s part, claims 4-8, 19, 22-24, 32 and 33 have not been
listed in the statement of the rejection on page 3 of the answer. It is quite clear, however, that claims 4-8, 19, 22-24, 32
and 33 should be included in the rejection since these claims were listed in the statement of rejection on page 2 of the
final Office action mailed August 22, 1994 (Paper No. 17). Moreover, the appellants in their brief have considered
claims 4-8, 19, 22-24, 32 and 33 to be included in the above noted prior art rejection (see e.g., page 8). Under these
circumstances, we also consider claims 4-8, 19, 22-24, 32 and 33 to be included in this rejection and further consider
the examiner’s aforementioned error to be harmless.
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