Appeal No. 2000-0998
Application 08/521,432
unsaturated hydrocarbon, which can be one or more of the olefin
reactants trimerized, oligomerized and/or polymerized in the
presence of the catalyst, preferably is present during the
catalyst system preparation, but can be introduced directly into
the trimerization, oligomerization and/or polymerization reactor
(col. 9, lines 36-48; col. 12, line 66 - col. 13, line 6).
Reagen discloses that ethylene can be trimerized to 1-hexene and
that ethylene and hexene can be co-trimerized to 1-decene and/or
1-tetradecene (col. 17, line 66 - col. 17, line 4).
The examiner argues that Reagen discloses (col. 17,
lines 17-32) that mixtures of ethylene and 1-hexene can be used
as trimerizable olefin compounds, and argues that the 1-hexene
can be considered to be both a reactant and a solvent (answer,
page 3). The examiner argues that one of ordinary skill in the
art who used 1-hexene as the solvent in the catalyst preparation
would have charged to the trimerization reaction vessel that
1-hexene still mixed with the catalyst system rather than
incurring the added expense of separating the 1-hexene from the
catalyst system and then recombining 1-hexene with the catalyst
system in the trimerization reaction vessel (answer, page 4).
The appellants’ claim 1 requires that ethylene is trimerized
to form 1-hexene. The examiner relies upon Reagen’s teaching
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