Appeal No. 1996-0740
Application No. 08/107,146
evidence of unexpected results. Accordingly, we will not
sustain the examiner's rejection.
It does not appear that appellants dispute the examiner's
determination that it would have been prima facie obvious for
one of ordinary skill in the art to replace the hydroxy on the
pyrazole moiety of Ciba with the claimed amino substituent in
view of the teachings of the secondary references that the
hydroxy and amino substituents are interchangeable on a
pyrazole moiety of reactive dyes. Rather, it is appellants'
contention that the Smith Declaration of October 16, 1992, the
Brierley Declaration of October 21, 1992, the Ebenezer
Declaration of September 23, 1993, the Butterworth Declaration
of September 22, 1993 and the Ebenezer Declaration of August
21, 1995 establish unexpected results for the claimed dyes and,
therefore, rebut the prima facie case of obviousness. In
particular, the Brierley Declaration demonstrates that a dye of
the present invention has far better build-up on cotton over a
variety of concentrations and temperatures in comparison to a
dye that is identical to the claimed dye with the exception of
the presence of a hydroxy substituent instead of an amino
substituent on the pyrazole moiety. Also, the Butterworth
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