Appeal No. 1997-0581
Application No. 08/168,549
line 35) and Kelusky’s Examples teach 0.25-0.36 wt% of grafted
monomer...”. See Answer, page 10. Notwithstanding silence
regarding the claimed grafted copolymer having greater than
five weight percent of grafted maleic anhydride and an acid
number greater than twenty eight, the examiner asserts
(Answer, page 10) that:
In particular if one of ordinary skill were, for
instance, willing to tolerate a greater degree of
crosslinking than that taught by Strait (cf. col. 3,
lines 39-40) or desired to obtain an end-product
most suitable for a particular application then the
motivation to control the acid number, i.e. the
amount of grafted acid or acid derivative monomer,
is disclosed by either Knowles at col. 5, lines 25-
37 or Stuart at col. 3, lines 28-48 according to
which the acid number of the grafted polymer is
generally determined by the end-use requirements of
the polymer (such as formation of stable emulsions
and utility in inks and coatings) and is controlled
by such reaction parameters as efficient mixing of
the reaction mixture, temperature and choice of
catalyst.
However, the fatal flaw in the examiner’s assertion is that
none of the applied prior art recognizes methods by which the
claimed grafted copolymer can be produced. Although the
examiner has attempted to fill in this gap by alleging the
need for tolerating a greater degree of crosslinking than that
taught by the applied prior art (Id.), the examiner has
supplied no evidence that one of ordinary skill in the art is
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