Appeal No. 96-3679
Application 08/179,861
485 (Fed. Cir. 1984). We find, on the present record, that the examiner has failed to meet her burden to
establish a prima facie case of anticipation.
The process set forth in claims 1 and 5 requires the steps of (i) passing a stream of “impure water”
through a “reverse osmosis step including a reverse osmosis membrane” to produce a “first purified water
stream” and a “waste water stream,” (ii) passing the “waste water stream” to a deionizing means to produce
“purified deionized water,” and (iii) passing the “purified deionized water” back through the “reverse
osmosis step” to produce a “second purified water stream.” The claims further stipulate that the “first5
purified water stream” and “second purified water stream” pass through the reverse osmosis membrane
only once.
The French patent discloses a process of “purifying” water (i.e. preparing demineralized and sterile
water) by a reverse osmosis step. In particular, water is passed through the membrane of a reverse
osmosis unit to produce a first fraction (similar to appellants’ “first purified water stream”). The fraction
which does not pass through the membrane, i.e., the second fraction, which fraction is characterized as
being “overmineralized “water (similar to appellants’ “waste water stream”), is discarded into the sewage
system. The French patent does not teach or suggest cycling the second fraction through a deionizing unit
Appellants’ claims recite forming first and second “purified” water streams and a “purified” deionized water5
component. It appears that the term “purified” may be ambiguous because the meaning of the term is not the same for
the water streams and the deionized water component. According to appellants, “purified” deionized water means the
replacement of “ions in solution with hydrogen and hydroxyl ions” (specification: p. 4). The “purified” water from the
reverse osmosis step is intended to mean water which is cleansed of microorganisms, pyrogens and ionic material. Upon
return of this application to the jurisdiction of the examiner, the examiner should consider whether the term “purified”
as used in the claims is indefinite under the second paragraph of 35 U.S.C. § 112.
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