Appeal No. 2001-1932 Application No. 08/829,512 Answer, Paper No. 21, mailed June 9, 1999, page 3. The examiner further relies on Suto as teaching the claimed catalyst. Id. The examiner acknowledges that although Suto discloses an aromatic chloride which includes pyridine chloride and that the starting material may be substituted on the ring, Suto does not specifically disclose that the substituent may be phenoxy as required by the claims. Id. The examiner also notes that Suto discloses an amide in example 8 which, when substituted by a phenoxy group, is a known herbicide as disclosed in CA ‘849. Id., page 4. According to the examiner, “[i]t would have been obvious to one ordinarily skilled in the art to have used the process of Suto to prepare compounds with phenoxy substituent as in CA ‘849 with the expectation of obtaining a useful herbicide. Although the Suto example gives a specific pyridine chloride, its isomers are not excluded since they are obvious variants.” Examiner’s Answer, page 4, second paragraph. Appellants maintain that [w]hile Suto discloses generically the starting organic (aromatic or heterocyclic) chloride and gives examples thereof, Suto et al. does not give any examples of appellants’ starting material. This is important because catalytic activity is unpredictable, Suto et al. does not disclose appellants’ starting material, and, accordingly, the catalytic activity or lack 4Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 NextLast modified: November 3, 2007