Appeal No. 2004-0495 Paper 22
Application No. 09/503,599 Page 8
glycol/terephthalate ratio. The mere fact that the prior art could be modified as
proposed by the examiner is not sufficient to establish a prima facie case of
obviousness.
Second, the conclusions of the examiner that (ii) preheating starting materials is
known in the art to minimize processing time and (iii) feeding reactants into different
levels of a reactor is a routine variable used to control residence time and generation of
volatile byproducts in the reactor are unsupported both generally and specifically in
regards to the claimed invention. On the contrary, Armstrong suggests feeding
reactants in at plate 14 of a 20-plate bubble cap column (see Figure; c. 4, ll. 66-69), i.e.,
in above the midpoint of the ester exchange vessel. Again, the mere fact that the prior
art could be modified as proposed by the examiner is not sufficient to establish a prima
facie case of obviousness.
Based on the foregoing, the decision of the examiner to reject claims 1-33 as
obvious over Kurian in view of Armstrong is reversed.
V. Miscellaneous
There is art of record which suggests preheating both glycol and terephthalate
components prior to reaction. For example, U.S. Patent 2,829,153 to Vodonik, cited in
appellants' specification (1:20-23) as disclosing a continuous process for the production
of bis(2-hydroxyethylene) terephthalate and made of record in an Information Disclosure
Statement (Paper 4, "IDS" filed 13 June 2000), expressly states that
ethylene glycol may be fed to the column cold, i.e., room temperature or
above, but for purposes of economy and optimum operation of the
column, it is usually desirable to have its temperature approximate the
temperature of the feed plate. Similarly, the temperature of the dimethyl
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