Appeal No. 2001-0697 Page 8
Application No. 09/125,033
process in such a way as to produce the claimed process, they do not support a
prima facie case of obviousness.
The examiner also rejected claim 22 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as obvious in
view of the same references applied to claims 1 -21 and 23-27, additionally
combined with Lund. As discussed above, the cited references do not support a
prima facie case of obviousness with respect to independent claim 1. Lund was
cited by the examiner simply for disclosing an enzyme catalyst for the
esterification reaction. Lund teaches nothing that would have motivated those
skilled in the art to substitute a sodium - or calcium-containing base for the
ammonia used by Walkup. Therefore, the rejection of claim 22 suffers from the
same deficiency as the rejection of claims 1-21 and 23-27, and is reversed for
the same reason.
Summary
The cited references do not provide the required reason, suggestion, or
motivation to modify the known process as required by the claims. The
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