Appeal No. 1998-3118
Application No. 08/448,543
10)” (answer page 4). This obviousness conclusion is not well founded.
As properly indicated by the appellants, Dekker’s teaching regarding
tetramethylxylene diisocyanate (TMXDI) is limited to the preparation of nonionic
polyurethane dispersions. That is, the polyurethanes of Dekker are dispersible rather than
soluble in water and therefore cannot be regarded as capable of forming “a homogeneous
mixture with water” as required by the independent claims on appeal. Viewed from this
perspective, Dekker’s teaching is not compatible with the teaching of Windemuth
concerning water soluble polyurethanes (i.e., polyurethanes capable of forming “a
homogeneous mixture with water”).
Under these circumstances we do not perceive the requisite suggestion “to use
[Dekker’s] TMXDI in Windemuth’s polyurethane” so as to thereby obtain a polyurethane
composition of the type here claimed. This is because, as discussed above, the water
dispersible versus water soluble teachings of these references are simply incompatible
with one another. Analogously, these references would not have provided the requisite
reasonable expectation that combining them in the manner proposed by the examiner
would be successful vis à vis the production of nonionic polyurethane of the type under
consideration (i.e., a nonionic polyurethane which forms a homogeneous mixture with
water).
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