Appeal No. 2003-1850
Application 09/783,510
Opinion
We have carefully reviewed the record on this appeal and based thereon find ourselves in
agreement with the supported position advanced by the examiner (answer, pages 3-4) that, prima
facie, one of ordinary skill in this art following the teachings of Trinh would have employed base
masking perfume ingredients in the amount specified in the appealed claims, and would have
used water to form a liquid or gel composition in the amount specified in the appealed claims, in
the reasonable expectation of arriving at an automatic dishwashing detergent composition. We
add the following to the examiner’s analysis.
We find that the generic description of the automatic dishwashing detergent compositions
disclosed in Trinh (e.g., page 4) contains essentially the same amount of a blooming perfume
composition comprising blooming perfume ingredients as recited in appealed claim 1, the sole
difference being that there is no indication in the broad recitation of the amount of base masking
perfume ingredients which can be present. Trinh discloses that the amount of non-blooming
perfume ingredients which have a boiling point of more than 260C° “should be minimized” in
the disclosed compositions (page 10, lines 4-6). We find in Trinh Table 3 “non-limiting
examples of non-blooming perfume ingredients” which includes by stated boiling point and
approximate ClogP values, base masking perfume ingredients that satisfy the limitation of “a
boiling point of more than about 260°C and a ClogP of at least about 3” in the appealed claims.
Indeed, as the examiner points out, the listing in Trinh Table 3 includes a number of base
masking perfume ingredients listed in specification Table 4 (answer, page 3). We find that forty
four (44) of the fifty two (52) “non-blooming perfume ingredients” listed in Trinh Table 3 satisfy
the claim limitation for base masking perfume ingredients. As appellants point out, there are a
number of base masking perfume ingredients in each of perfume compositions A through D of
Trinh, the total amounts of such ingredients ranging from 16% to 24% (brief, page 9). The
examiner finds that the sole non-blooming perfume ingredient of perfume composition F of
Trinh is present in the amount of 5% and recognizes that this ingredient does not satisfy the claim
limitation with respect to base masking perfume ingredients (answer, pages 5).
It seems to us from this substantial evidence that, prima facie, one of ordinary skill in this
art would have reasonably selected one or more of the non-blooming perfume ingredients from
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