Appeal No. 1998-0482
Application No. 08/404,908
argued by the appellants and acknowledged by the examiner
(e.g., see the last paragraph on page 5 of the answer), the
de-ashing of pulp referred to by Peter involves removing metal
ions from the pulp. Moreover, it is reasonably clear from the
teachings of Schleinkofer and Lundgren that metals from pulp
go into solution under acidic conditions (e.g., again see page
77 of Schleinkofer as well as page 2 of Lundgren). It follows
that the removal of ash or metals at vacuum filter 33 of Peter
must be under an acidic rather than alkaline pH.
The examiner’s position may also involve the proposition
that an artisan with ordinary skill would have found it
obvious to deliberately adjust the pH of the filtrate/pulp
mixture at vacuum filter 33 of Peter in order to deliberately
effect adsorption of metals and metal ions from the filtrate
into the pulp. To the extent the examiner’s position involves
this proposition, we still cannot join with the examiner on
this matter. This is because we agree with the appellants
that the applied references simply contain no teaching or
suggestion of adsorbing metals and metal ions into pulp from
liquid in accordance with the claims before us.
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