Appeal No. 2005-0407
Application No. 09/888,246
roasted products in examples 2-4 relied upon by the examiner,
have yellowness indexes that are much higher than those of the
appellants’ product in the wet cake. Moreover, the appellants’
disclosed process for making the brominated diphenylethane
product differs from that of Mack. The appellants mix bromine
and diphenylethane in a molar ratio of bromine to diphenylethane
greater than about 5:1, and quickly feed the mixture to a
stirrable reaction mass comprising bromine and a bromination
catalyst, whereas Mack charges bromine and bromination catalyst
to a reaction vessel and slowly adds molten diphenylalkane to the
bromine and catalyst (col. 4, lines 12-16). The examiner has not
explained why, regardless of this difference in the product
preparation methods and regardless of Mack’s silence as to
occluded free bromine, one of ordinary skill in the art would
have reasonably expected Mack’s treatments with chelating and
complexing agents and solvents to produce a wet cake having an
occluded free bromine content within the appellants’ recited
range.
The examiner argues that “if the color of the wet cake
evidences its occluded free bromine content as disclosed by the
present specification (see page 14, section 0048) and Mack
teaches several treatment methods for improvement in the color of
5
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007