Appeal No. 1998-0762
Application No. 08/379,576
6, 7 and 8, over the combined disclosures of Dany ‘895, Dany
‘415 and Painter.
We consider next the examiner’s § 103 rejection of claim
3 over the disclosure of Hartman in addition to the Dany and
Painter disclosures indicated above. Claim 3 limits the EDDS
(in acid, or alkali, alkaline earth, ammonium or substituted
ammonium salts thereof or mixtures thereof) recited in claim 1
to magnesium salt of EDDS. As indicated above, we find that
Hartman is already part of the Painter disclosure. We also
find that Hartman teaches the importance of using EDDS in
acid, alkali, alkaline earth, ammonium or substituted ammonium
salts thereof, or mixtures thereof in a laundry composition
containing a detergent builder, and anionic and nonionic
surfactants. See column 3, lines 10-27. Since the magnesium
salt of EDDS is one of the limited salt forms described in
Hartman, we agree with the examiner that it would have been
obvious to employ the magnesium salt of EDDS as the chelant of
the laundry composition described in Dany ‘895 as indicated
supra. See also Merck & Co. v. Biocraft Laboratories Inc.,
874 F.2d 804, 807, 10 USPQ2d 1843, 1846 (Fed. Cir.), cert.
8
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007