Appeal No. 1999-2518
Application 08/722,213
of ordinary skill in the art by Collier for the reasons given
above regarding the rejection of that claim.
For the above reasons we affirm the rejection of claims 8,
13 and 24.
Rejection of claims 17 and 22 under 35 U.S.C. § 103
over Collier in view of Panandiker and De Cupere
The appellants state that claims 17 and 22 are independently
patentable (brief, page 4). We therefore address both of these
claims.
The appellants’ claim 17, which depends from claim 1, and
claim 22, which depends from claim 20, require that the detergent
composition contains 0.05 to 10 wt% of a granular suds suppressor
comprising polydimethylsiloxane, silica and starch. De Cupere
teaches that excessive sudsing interferes negatively with the
action of a wash liquor on fabrics, and that a combination of a
silicone antifoam compound, starch and silica provides a stable,
free-flowing suds suppressor for detergent compositions in powder
form (col. 1, lines 17-19 and 48-52; col. 2, lines 20-22). This
teaching would have fairly suggested, to one of ordinary skill in
the art, using De Cupere’s suds suppressor in Collier’s detergent
composition, which can be in powder form (page 6, lines 14-16),
to avoid the negative effect of excessive sudsing.
11
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007