Appeal No. 2004-2015 Page 2
Application No. 09/800,547
INTRODUCTION
The claims are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a). As evidence of obviousness, the
Examiner relies upon the following prior art references:
Trainor et al. (Trainor) 4,423,084 Dec. 27, 1983
Ross 5,632,596 May 27, 1997
The specific rejection maintained by the Examiner is as follows: Claims 1-27 stand
rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Trainor in view of Ross (Answer,
p. 4).
Appellants state that claims 1-27 stand or fall together (Brief, p. 7). Appellants and the
Examiner focus on claim 1 which is directed to a process for making a dressing. We will select
claim 1 to represent the issues on appeal.1
Claim 1 reads as follows:
1. A process for making a dressing comprising the steps of:
(a) combining raw ingredients in a pre-mix tank comprising a means for mixing to form a
coarse emulsion, and
(b) processing the coarse emulsion in one pass through an in-line mixer/emulsifier
comprising at least one set of stator and rotor, and a variable speed motor to drive the rotor,
wherein the stator and rotor comprise co-axially engageable rings of teeth having a plurality of
concentric vanes and concentric wells with generally slanted side walls from each vane to each
well and the rotor and stator when engaged are such that the concentric vanes of the stator align
with the corresponding concentric wells of the rotor and the concentric vanes of the rotor align
1We are cognizant of the fact that claim 22 is not subsumed within the scope of claim 1: Claim 22 is
directed to a product, not a process. However, our selection of claim 22 would not change the outcome of our
decision. Therefore, we choose to select claim 1, the claim addressed and argued by Appellants, as representative of
the issues on appeal.
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