Appeal No. 2001-2079 5
Application No. 09/308,400
here change through partial hydrolysis into the essential active component - described at
the beginning - of the lubricants used in accordance with the invention. Besides the fatty
acids released which are converted into their salts in the normally basic water-based drilling
fluid, the free fatty alcohols and hence the essential lubricant component according to the
invention are formed.” See specification, page 7, lines 8-17.
It is well known that fatty acid salts formed in accordance with the disclosure in the
specification are emulsifiers.2 Based upon the above findings and analysis, we conclude that
the specification and claims are directed to both the presence of emulsifiers and vegetable
oils. Accordingly, not only is there no basis for the limitation, “free of both a vegetable oil
2See Organic Chemistry, Morrison and Boyd, Allyn and Bacon, Boston, (1959), pages 493, 495
and 496. “The making of soap is one of the oldest of chemical syntheses. (It is not nearly so old, of course
as the production of ethyl alcohol; man’s desire for cleanliness is much newer than his desire for
intoxification.) When the German tribesmen of Caesar’s time boiled goat tallow with potash leached from the
ashes of wood fires, they were carrying out the same chemical reaction as the one carried out on a
tremendous scale by, modern soap manufacturers: hydrolysis of glycerides.
[Reaction Omitted]
Ordinary soap today is simply a mixture of sodium salts of long-chain fatty acids. It is a mixture
because the fat from which it is made is a mixture, and for washing our hands or our clothes a mixture is just
as good as a single pure salt. Soap may vary in composition and method of processing: if made from olive oil
it is Castile soap; alcohol can be added to make it transparent; air can be beaten in to make it float; perfumes,
dyes and germicides can be added; if a potassium salt (instead of a sodium salt) it is soft soap. Chemically,
however, soap remains pretty much the same and does its job in the same way.
The cleansing action of a soap is an extremely complicated matter, but we can get some idea of the
factors involved from the following simplified picture. A soap molecule has a polar end -COO-Na+, and a
non-polar end, the long chain of 12 to 18 carbons; the polar end is water-soluble, the non-polar end is oil
soluble. Ordinary oil droplets in contact with water tend to coalesce so that there is an oil layer and a water
layer; but the presence of soap changes this. The non-polar ends of soap molecules dissolve in the oil
droplet, leaving the carboxylate ends projecting into the surrounding water layer (Figure 17.1). [Figure
omitted]. Due to the presence of the negatively charged carboxylate groups, each oil droplet is surrounded
by an ionic atmosphere. Repulsion between similar charges keeps the oil droplets from coalescing and a
stable emulsion of oil in water is thus obtained. Soap cleans by emulsifying the fat and grease that make up
and contain dirt. As we shall see, this emulsifying, and hence cleansing, property is not limited to carboxylic
acids, but is possessed by any molecule containing a large non-polar portion and a polar portion (Sec.
17.26).”
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