Appeal No. 96-3426
Application No. 08/115,274
“[T]he examiner bears the initial burden, on review of
the prior art or on any other ground, of presenting a prima
facie case of unpatentability.” See In re Oetiker, 977 F.2d
1443, 1445, 24 USPQ2d 1443, 1444 (Fed. Cir. 1992). The
examiner relies upon a combination of three references to
reject the claimed subject matter. The basic premise of the
rejection is that Lahoda discloses the procedure of removing
organic materials from solids by treatment of the soil with
surfactants to solubilize the organics. See column 9, 31-35.
Exemplification is found in Example 2 which uses a mixture of
gasoline, lead and diesel. The secondary references to Guymon
and Hosmer disclose the use of surfactants such as ethoxylated
alcohols or ethoxylated nonyl phenols respectively for removal
or emulsification of hydrocarbons respectively, including
gasoline.
However, none of the references before us disclose the
presence of either tetraethyl lead or bromobutane as required
by the claimed subject. According, the dispositive issues
before are whether the gasoline component disclosed by the
references of record inherently includes the presence of
tetraethyl lead or bromobutane and whether the treatments by
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