Appeal No. 1997-2010
Application No. 08/332,671
involved in any reaction. Nichols discloses that the alcohol
reactant is ROH where R may be hydroxyalkyl, and thus does not
teach that any second hydroxyl moiety will be involved in the
reaction since R remains unchanged (see the formula ROH where
R may be hydroxyalkyl, at column 3, lines 45-53, and the
product recited in claim 1 at columns 5-6).
In addition, contrary to the examiner’s assertion, the
problem disclosed by Nichols would not have been relevant to
appellants’ claimed process. Nichols discloses that the
principal problem in the well known reaction to produce the
desired methyl diphenyl phosphate is that the “methyl
substituent of the phosphate ester is far more susceptible to
this adverse cleavage reaction with hydrogen chloride than the
phenyl group”
and no practical way has been found to reduce this undesirable
cleavage so that large scale commercial manufacture of this
compound could become a reality (column 1, line 44 - column 2,
line 10). In appellants’ claimed process, there would be no
possible cleavage of a methyl substituent since the diol forms
5
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