Appeal No. 1998-2531
Application 08/574,279
brittle. See col. 4, lines 49-55. Therefore, based on the record before us, it is just as likely that the
coating produced by the Daum process would be chewy.
According to appellant, the use of a heated liquid and its subsequent cooling is the key to
producing a brittle candy coating as claimed (Brief, p. 3):
It is important to note that coating raisins with liquid candy will normally not
produce a thin and brittle coating unless the coating is carried out in the manner set forth
in claim 1 in which raisins and a heated liquid candy are deposited in a spinning pot, the
liquid cooling and hardening as the pot spins to produce the thin and brittle candy
coating.
The nature of the spinning action is such as to create a centrifugal force resulting
in a very thin coating. And the concurrent cooling and hardening of the heated liquid
candy produces a thin coating that is brittle.
Apparently, in an attempt to establish that the claimed candy-coated raisin would have been
obvious in view of the teachings in Daum, the examiner maintains that "it would have been obvious to
heat or not in the process of Daum et al to achieve a mixture of the ingredients." See Answer, p. 4. As
pointed out above, Daum discloses that an "essential advantage of this invention consists in that all of
the process steps can be conducted at ambient temperature" (col. 4, lines 29-31). Therefore,
regardless of whether or not it would have been obvious to heat the coating ingredients initially to obtain
a uniform mixture, absent appellant's disclosure, there would have been no reason to deposit the heated
mixture onto the raisins in the Daum process. See In re Gordon, 733 F.2d 900, 902, 221 USPQ
1125, 1127 (Fed. Cir. 1984) ("The mere fact
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