Appeal No. 1996-3017
Application No. 08/851,810
presented no objective evidence that adjusting the reaction
mixture to an alkaline pH produces an unexpected result.
We now turn to the examiner's rejection of claims 6-10,
13, 19 and 20 under 35 U.S.C. § 103. Independent claim 6
calls for preparing alkyl-pyrazines by "heating, refluxing and
subliming" an aqueous medium containing ammonium ions and an
acyloin compound as reactants. While the primary references
do not disclose sublimation, appellant does not dispute the
examiner's factual determination that Evans discloses the
isolation of alkyl-pyrazines by a sublimation technique.
Since Weissberger evidences that sublimation was a well-known
technique for isolating volatile compounds, in general, and
Evans evidences that it was known in the art to employ
sublimation to isolate alkyl-pyrazines, we find no error in
the examiner's conclusion that it would have been obvious for
one of ordinary skill in the art to employ such a well-known
separation technique to isolate the alkyl-pyrazines produced
by the methods of the primary references. In effect, our
analysis is much the same as that discussed above with respect
to the rejection of claim 2.
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