Appeal No. 2000-1444 Page 3
Application No. 09/040,245
OPINION
In reaching our decision in this appeal, we have given careful consideration to the
appellant’s specification and claims, to the applied prior art references, and to the
respective positions articulated by the appellant and the examiner. As a consequence of
our review, we make the determinations which follow.
The appellant’s invention is directed to removing pharmaceutical agents from
human waste, a problem the appellant believes has not been considered by the prior art
(specification, page 3). As manifested in independent claim 1, the invention comprises
the steps of:
providing a portable waste receptacle which is configured to serve as a toilet
for an individual who has been treated with a pharmaceutical agent, the
receptacle being a self-contained unit which is capable of being sealed for
transport of human wastes to a facility,
accumulating human wastes in the receptacle, the wastes containing the
pharmaceutical agent and metabolized byproducts thereof,
transporting the waste receptacle and the human wastes contained therein
to the facility, and
removing the pharmaceutical agent from the human wastes.
The examiner asserts that all of the claimed steps are disclosed by Green, with the
exception that Green does not remove pharmaceutical agents. However, it is the
examiner’s view that Held “teaches a facility where waste (including ‘pharmaceutical
agents’) is processed as spelled out on lines 35-39 of column 4,” and therefore the
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