Appeal No. 2001-1986
Application No. 08/719,968
one of ordinary skill in the art would have been led to hydrogenate the polyolefin diol of the
polyurethane prepolymer described in Scheve or Nakatsukasa1.
1Our colleague takes the position that “the examiner’s rejections over Nakatsukasa should
be reversed,” but the examiner’s rejections over Scheve and the secondary references should be
affirmed. However, the only rejection before us is based on “Scheve and Nakatsukasa in view of
Reyes, Hoffmann and Chen et al.” See the Answer, page 3.
Recognizing the applied prior art references themselves lack motivation or suggestion to
hydrogenate a particular part of the polyurethane prepolymer described in Scheve, our
colleague takes the position that:
The level of skill in this art is sufficiently high that one of ordinary skill in the art would
recognize that the deleterious effect of unsaturation in polymer chains would be independent of
the groups at the ends of the chains, especially as the chains get longer.
Our colleague, however, proffers no evidence supporting this position. Nor has the
examiner proffered this position as the basis for his prima facie case of obviousness. See the
Answer in its entirety.
Finally, our colleague takes the position that “it cannot be denied that hydrogenated
polybutadiene has the same structure as polyethylene (footnote omitted).” Again, there is no
evidence that hydrogenated polybutadiene has the same structure as polyethylene. Nor has the
examiner proffered this position as the basis for his prima facie case of obviousness. Our
colleague incorrectly assumes that butadiene units having doble bonds at the ends repeat linearly
and that hydrogenation would not remove any double bond from the butadiene units
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