Appeal No. 2004-0638
Application No. 10/038,975
Ozero, Paggini, Delannoy, Coffey, Randall and Kirk-Othmer. The
appealed claims also stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as
being unpatentable over the stated combination of references.
Appellants submit at page 3 of the Brief that "[t]he claims
presently on appeal stand or fall together." Consequently, even
though appellants' Argument section of the Brief makes reference
to claims 3 and 4, all the appealed claims stand or fall together
with claim 1, and we will limit our consideration to the
examiner's rejections of claim 1.
We have thoroughly reviewed each of appellants' arguments
for patentability. However, we are in complete agreement with
the examiner that the appealed claims are unpatentable over the
applied prior art. Accordingly, we will sustain the examiner's
rejections for essentially those reasons expressed in the Answer,
which we incorporate herein, and we add the following primarily
for emphasis.
There is no dispute that Smith '819, Smith '017,
Slaugh '389, Slaugh '478, Powell '182 and Powell '808, the
primary references, disclose the admittedly known process of
preparing 1,3-propanediol by the reaction steps recited in the
appealed claims. As acknowledged by the examiner, however, the
primary references are silent with respect to the amount of
-3-
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