Appeal No. 2002-0454
Application No. 09/083,122
Brief (Paper No. 27) for the appellants’ arguments thereagainst. As a consequence of
our review, we make the determinations which follow.
35 U.S.C. § 103
Claims 1-2, 5-6 and 16-17 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103(a) for
obviousness over Lewis in view of Lowenstein.
In rejecting claims under 35 U.S.C. § 103, the examiner bears the initial burden
of presenting a prima facie case of obviousness. See In re Rijckaert, 9 F.3d 1531,
1532, 28 USPQ2d 1955, 1956 (Fed. Cir. 1993). It is well-established that the
conclusion that the claimed subject matter is prima facie obvious must be supported by
evidence, as shown by some objective teaching in the prior art or by knowledge
generally available to one of ordinary skill in the art that would have led that individual to
combine the relevant teachings of the references to arrive at the claimed invention.
See In re Fine, 837 F.2d 1071, 1074, 5 USPQ2d 1596, 1598 (Fed. Cir. 1988).
It is the examiner’s position that (Answer, page 3):
“Lewis discloses the preparation of the hygroscopic potassium salts of
hydroxycitric acid in which the dried fruit rinds of Garcinia cambogia are cooked in water
to be extracted with ethanol, after its filtration, 40% KOH is added to the acidic filtrate to
neutralize the mixture, subsequently the oily liquid is washed repeatedly with ethanol,
and finally the yellow semisolid is obtained from drying out the oily liquid in vacuo at
80°C.”
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