Appeal No. 1995-4997
Application No. 08/089,436
the presently claimed phosphonomethylated polyvinyl amines in
a method of inhibiting scale deposition. It is not of little
significance that appellants' specification, at page 2,
describes the claimed polyvinylamines as new compounds, and
neither of the applied references discloses the claimed
compounds. Even assuming, for the sake of argument, that it
would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art
to substitute the phosphonic acid group-containing ion
exchange resins of Justice for the amino polymethyl-phosphonic
acids of Hwa, this would not result in the claimed invention.
Justice expressly teaches that "[t]he ion exchange resin
matrix or backbone represented by R may include, for example,
copolymers of styrene with divinylbenzene, copolymers of a
methacrylate or acrylate with divinylbenzene, phenol-formalin
resins, etc." (column 3, lines 55-59). Justice does not teach
the claimed polyvinyl backbone, and the examiner has not
established on this record that a polyvinyl backbone would
have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art in view
of the polymer backbones disclosed by Justice. While the
examiner concludes that "[i]t would have been obvious to bond
an aminomethylphosphonic acid functional group(s) to a polymer
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