Appeal No. 2001-2525 Page 3
Application No. 09/000,579
OPINION
Upon careful review of the respective positions advanced by
appellants and the examiner with respect to the rejections that
are before us for review, we find ourselves in agreement with
appellants’ position in that the examiner has failed to carry the
burden of establishing a prima facie case of obviousness. See In
re Oetiker, 977 F.2d 1443, 1445, 24 USPQ2d 1443, 1444 (Fed. Cir.
1992); In re Piasecki, 745 F.2d 1468, 1471-1472, 223 USPQ 785,
787-788 (Fed. Cir. 1984). Accordingly, we will not sustain the
examiner's rejections.
Eisenlohr discloses that an aromatics containing feedstock
is subjected to fractional distillation to obtain dissimilar
compositional fractions for subsequent processing and recovery of
aromatic components using solvent extraction of a select portion
of the initial feedstock. See column 1, line 39 through column
2, line 54 and column 3, line 20 through column 4, line 11 of
Eisenlohr. The examiner (answer, page 3) acknowledges that
Eisenlohr does not disclose the separate processing of first and
second portions of an aromatic and non-aromatic containing
feedstock, which portions have the same composition, as here
claimed. However, the examiner (answer, page 3) takes the
position that
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