Appeal No. 1997-3189
Application 08/592,898
In support of appellants’ argument that the applied
references would have rendered the claimed invention merely
obvious to try, appellants rely upon In re Geiger, 815 F.2d 686,
2 USPQ2d 1276 (Fed. Cir. 1987). In that case, however, the court
did not find a suggestion in the references, two of which were
directed toward treating cooling water and one of which was
directed toward treating boiler water, to combine the materials
disclosed in each reference. See Geiger, 815 USPQ at 688, 2
USPQ2d at 1278. In the present case, as discussed above, the
dyes in both references are used for the same purpose, and
Balliello discloses using formazan dyes, which are the type of
dye disclosed by Geigy ‘464, in Balliello’s dye mixture. Thus,
unlike in Geiger, the references in the present case would have
fairly suggested, to one of ordinary skill in the art, combining
the dyes in these references.
Appellants argue that Venkataraman’s disclosure that “[t]he
behavior of dyes when applied from a mixture is in many cases
quite different from their behavior when applied as individual
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