Appeal No. 2001-0065
Application 09/048,289
Brief, page 6, lines 8-9). The Appellants further state, with regard to the combination
with Mannbro, that:
[T]here clearly is no prima facie case of obviousness is apparent from an
evaluation of Mannbro. The Mannbro reference does not provide any assistance
to Ahs et al as far as teaching the claimed invention is concerned, and in fact
also provides a teaching specifically contrary to the invention since Mannbro
requires high consistency (that is about 30%) oxygen delignification of pulp.
Thus it would be specifically against the teachings of Mannbro to modify Ahs et al
to provide the invention, which uses medium consistency oxygen delignification.
This can never be considered obvious. (Appeal Brief, page 8, line 17 – page 9,
line 1).
The Appellants additionally argue in their Reply Brief that elimination of the
reactor of Ahs is based on hindsight and reconstruction of the prior art with the invention
in mind as the “essence” of Ahs is to utilize a second oxygen reactor and it can “never”
be considered obvious to go against the essence of an invention (Reply Brief, page 1,
lines 7 – 12).
The Appellants also contend that the Examiner selectively viewed the prior art
with the invention in mind, arguing that in the “pulp and paper art, medium and high
consistency treatments are universally recognized as being significantly different”
(Reply Brief, page 2, lines 17-21), and that the Examiner erred in reciting 18% as a
consistency of Ahs.
We believe that the Appellants have over focused on the differences of the Ahs
and Mannbro references. Both are highly relevant to the present invention, relating to
the same field of endeavor and describing very similar processes. While we agree that
the Examiner mistakenly stated that Ahs disclosed 18% (we, like the Appellants, can
find references only to 15% and “medium consistency” in Ahs (see, e.g. column 2, lines
7
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007