Appeal No. 1997-0142
Application No. 08/373,721
whether these requirements have been satisfied by the
examiner. More specifically, we find little if any discussion
by the examiner that it would have been reasonable to expect
Navratil’s dye bath to successfully dye the amine-treated
polyester fibers of Farmer. In any event, even considering
the aforementioned requirements to be satisfied, the
examiner’s section 103 rejection would still be improper based
on the record before us.
This is because the appellant has explicitly argued that
the here claimed invention exhibits indicia of nonobviousness
in the form of unexpected results (e.g., see pages 12 and 13
of the brief). According to the appellant, their
specification data evinces that the here claimed harmonizing
compounds produce unexpectedly superior dye-results relative
to the surfactant compounds of Navratil and in particular the
surfactant compounds disclosed by patentee which are just
outside the class of harmonizing compounds defined by appealed
claim 1. On the other hand, the examiner in her answer has
proffered no reason at all for considering the appellant’s
evidence of nonobviousness to be unpersuasive. Indeed, the
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