Appeal No. 2002-0178
Application 09/385,909
for the same reason discussed above with respect to claim 8, and
hence, because anticipation is the epitome of obviousness, we
affirm this rejection with respect to claim 9.
With respect to claim 16, claim 16 depends upon claim 1 and
recites “wherein said ionic sulfonate monomer is sodium vinyl
sulfonate, or potassium vinyl sulfonate.” The examiner relies
upon the secondary references of Puschak or Villiger to meet this
aspect of claim 16. However, the examiner has not explained the
motivation of why one of ordinary skill in the art would have
utilized the sodium vinyl sulfonate as set forth in Villiger
(which is used in Villiger as a anchoring agent in promoting the
anchoring of an encapsulating polymer to the surfaces of colorant
particles during polymerization for ensuring that all the
colorant particles are uniformly coated by the polymer). Nor has
the examiner explained why one of ordinary skill in the art would
have substituted the sodium vinyl sulfonate of Puschak (Puschak
utilizes the sodium vinyl sulfonate as an acid functional monomer
to obtain a desired range of acid number). The examiner has not
explained why either of these utilities would be useful in the
process of Collins. In this context, we therefore agree with
appellants’ comments made on pages 8-9 of the brief. We
therefore reverse the rejection of claim 16.
III. The rejection of claims 10 and 11 under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103 over Collins in view of Lundberg
We note that the claims 10 and 11 do not require alkylene.
That is, both claims 10 and 11 depend upon claim 8 and in claim
8, R' can be alkylene or –CO-R2. Hence, when R' is –CO-R2, which
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