Appeal No. 2002-0865
Application No. 08/940,996
profile in a recirculation loop for the polymerization process of
Bush.
This application is remanded to the examiner in order to
make the following factual and legal findings. First, the
examiner should determine whether the appealed claims are
sufficiently broad to embrace a process wherein a small amount of
polymerization occurs in steps (a) and (b), which may be a single
stage, as disclosed in Fan. Since appellants' stages (a) and (b)
involve a reaction mixture of monomer, water, dispersing
auxiliaries, seed and initiator, and recirculation may only occur
during the third stage which adds the remainder of the monomer,
it would seem that a polymerization process wherein a small
amount of polymer is formed in the combined first and second
stages is within the scope of the appealed claims. Also,
inasmuch as appellants acknowledge that "the prior art teaches
that under the influence of high shear fields (as would occur
when pumping through an external circuit), in particular at
elevated temperatures, a monomer emulsion can break down and that
polymerization of such an unstable monomer would lead to the
undesirable formation of gels" (page 5 of Brief, second
paragraph), the examiner should determine whether it would have
been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art to use the
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