Appeal No. 1997-0296
Application No. 08/378,086
§ 103 in view of the applied prior art. Accordingly, we will
sustain the examiner's rejection for essentially those reasons
expressed in the answer, and we add the following primarily for
emphasis.
Appellant’s specification, at page 9, describes the state of
the prior art as follows:
Cocoa is very expensive, and the process yield thereof
is critically important. Even when conventional
processes are optimized, however, significant losses in
quality and effective yield occur during uncontrolled
oxidation at several steps of the process, especially
those steps involving cocoa liquor or butter. In the
finished product, oxidative instability contributes
quite strongly to off-flavors, bad appearance, and
limited shelf life. Other important quality parameters
are also deleteriously affected by oxidative
instability. While oxygen from air is responsible for
a portion of the oxidation, catalysts for oxidation and
oxygen sources exist in the product and process stream
as well. While blanketing with nitrogen or other inert
gas is effective for merely removing air, it is not
effective to inhibit internal oxidations in addition to
air oxidation.
Thus, a need exists for a method by which internal
oxidation as well as air oxidation of chocolate may be
inhibited.
Accordingly, appellant acknowledges that oxidation of chocolate
was a known problem in the art at the time of filing present
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