Appeal No. 1999-0989 10
Application No. 08/265,267
Nakano is directed to a method of treating oil containing wastewater.1 We find that
the wastewater is passed through a contact phase containing an oxidative substance and is
subsequently contacted with a treatment material comprising organic polymers. See page
3. The oxidative substance includes ozone. See page 4. We further find that the contact
with an oxidative substance eases the adsorptive removal of emulsified oil in the presence of
organic polymers. Id. Accordingly, it would have been obvious to pretreat an oil
contaminated fluid with ozone prior to its treatment with the composition of Gabrick for
the express purpose of easing the removal of oil contaminants. The rejection of claim 6 is
accordingly, sustained.
The Rejection of Claims 7, 8, and 11 over Biron in view of Gabrick
With respect to the rejection of claims 7 and 11, we find that Gabrick in and of
itself discloses the utilization of a glass vessel containing an indicated amount of solid
absorbent. See Examples 1 through 9. We conclude that the placement of the absorbent
in a glass vessel provides the requisite column of geometric shapes in as much as at least
some of the absorbent will be present atop each other in a vertical configuration through
which the contaminated fluid would pass.
With respect to claim 11, we find that Example 1 of Gabrick reports an observation
that, “[t]he seawater after separation of the solid absorbent was clear and exhibited no
1All references to the Nakano Patent are directed to an English language translation thereof provided
to the USPTO in June 2001.
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