Appeal No. 1999-0700 Page 13
Application No. 08/590,580
50 to 60% and then broken down or shredded, agglomerated into pellets and finally dried (see column
2, lines 9-31 and 53-66).
Knapick discloses a process for converting waste paper into tissue paper by pulping the waste
paper in a hydropulper 2, washing the pulp in a washer 6, cleaning and de-inking the pulp in a de-inking
station 10 and delivering the resulting pulp to a paper making machine 14 to produce tissue paper.
Fibers useful in the tissue paper making process are recovered from the reject stream from the de-
inking station and returned to the washer 6. The remainder of the reject stream is delivered to a
flotation clarifier to separate water useful in the paper making process from the reject stream. Knapick
discloses an agglomerating process for converting the material in the reject stream into industrial
absorbents for oil and water and animal litter and feed as an alternative to sending the reject materials to
a landfill or incinerator (page 1, line 30, to page 2, line 6).
As illustrated, for example, by Lowe and Knapick, it was well known and conventional in the
paper-making art at the time of the appellant's invention to make paper using recycled waste paper.
Therefore, one of ordinary skill in the art reading the Kok disclosure would have immediately envisaged
the paper manufacturing processes discussed in column 2, lines 26-31, of Kok as including both
primary (from virgin cellulosic fiber materials) and secondary (from recycled waste paper materials)
paper manufacturing processes. Moreover, one of ordinary skill in the art would have appreciated
from the combined teachings of Kok, Lowe and Knapick the suitability of primary de-inked sludge
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