Appeal No. 1996-0696
Application 08/150,268
OPINION
We have carefully considered all of the arguments
advanced by appellants and the examiner and agree with
appellants that the aforementioned rejections are not well
founded. Accordingly, we reverse these rejections.
Appellants acknowledge that desflurane, which is the
product recited in appellants’ claim 10 when R’ is hydrogen
and R” is fluorine, was known in the art at the time of their
invention (specification, page 1, lines 5-9), as was the
recited starting material for making desflurane
(specification, page 6, lines 17-22).
Neither of the references relied upon by the examiner
discloses appellants’ starting material or product. The
examiner argues that one of ordinary skill in the art would
have expected that using the processes of McBee and WO ‘909,
wherein the fluorinating agent is, respectively, silver
difluoride and cobalt trifluoride, to fluorinate appellants’
starting material would have produced a mixture of compounds
which includes partially fluorinated compounds in which
different hydrogens are substituted (answer, pages 5-6).
This argument is not well taken because the examiner has
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