Appeal No. 2004-2019
Application No. 10/301,441 Page 3
As for the § 102(b) rejection of claims 1 and 3 over
Knifton, the so rejected claims require that an MTBE1 stream
comprised mainly (chiefly or for the most part)2 of MTBE and
containing a minor quantity of impurities is contacted in the
liquid phase with a solid large pore zeolite. See Examples 1 and
2 of the present specification. A product MTBE stream having a
reduced content of impurities is recovered. As evident by a fair
reading of appellants’ specification, appellants employ the term
“impurities” to represent all components other than MTBE. This
is made manifest by a review of the specification as a whole
including the Examples (see, e.g., Example 1) presented in the
specification. While Knifton discloses contacting an MTBE stream
with a zeolite material to remove acids from the stream, the MTBE
streams disclosed in Knifton include mainly (a major amount of)
impurities including methanol (MeOH) and t-butanol (tBA) and a
1 methyl tertiary butyl ether.
2 See, e.g., the definition of “mainly” and “minor” at pages
734 and 775 of the American College Dictionary (1970). A copy of
those pages of the dictionary is enclosed with the decision. We
note that the definition relative to quantity applies in the
context of the claimed subject matter, not any alternative
definitions that may be attributed to those terms. In this
regard, the terms “mainly” and “minor” are inextricably
intertwined in the context of the claimed invention.
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