Appeal No. 1997-2195
Application 08/102,752
Hamprecht ‘927 discloses pyrimidines which are useful as
intermediates for crop protecting agents (col. 6, lines 65-68).
These pyrimidines differ from those of appellant in that at the
6-position, the Hamprecht ‘927 pyrimidines have an -OR group,2
where R is alkyl, alkenyl, alkynyl, cycloalkyl, phenyl or benzyl2
(col. 1, lines 5-21), rather than having appellant’s
trifluoromethoxy group.
The examiner argues that it would have been obvious to one
of ordinary skill in the art to substitute a trifluoromethoxy
group for the methoxy group in Hamprecht’s example 1 because
Lacchein (table, page 10) teaches the equivalence of methoxy and
trifluoromethoxy substituents in a pyrimidine in an analogous art
(answer, page 4). The examiner, however, does not explain how
one of ordinary skill in the art would have formed the
trifluoromethoxy substituent. As discussed above, the Hamprecht
declaration indicates that one of ordinary skill in the art could
not have formed such a substituent using Lacchein’s method, and
the examiner has presented no evidence or technical reasoning to
the contrary. Accordingly, we conclude that the examiner has not
established a prima facie case of obviousness of appellant’s
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