Appeal No. 1996-4171
Application 07/762,298
The examiner relies on Eccles to establish that the
claimed method as defined by appealed claims 1, 4, 6, 7, 10,
11, and 15-18 would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill
in the art. Eccles teaches a process for the removal of heavy
metals from a nitric acid raffinate which is usually discarded
(page 1, lines 11-12; page 2, lines 27-30). Eccles’ process
uses a commercially available chelating aminophosphonic resin
to remove the heavy metal thorium from the waste stream (page
1, lines 19-30). According to Eccles, this process “is
advantageous in its ability to remove small quantities, in the
parts per million range, of such [heavy] metals” (page 2,
lines 27-29). Eccles, however, makes no mention of reducing
the concentration level of the heavy metal to a sub-ppm level.
In applying this reference, the examiner recognized that
Eccles does not teach the claimed limitation of reducing the
heavy metal ion concentration to less than 1 ppm (examiner’s
answer, page 3). With respect to this deficiency in Eccles
and in reference to appellant’s claims, the examiner stated
that “[t]he exact heavy metal ion concentrations of the
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