Appeal No. 2005-0622
Application 09/911,279
The appellants acknowledge that Savu, which is assigned to
the appellants= assignee, discloses the surfactant recited in
claim 1 (brief, page 14).
In order for the appellants= claimed invention to have been
prima facie obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art over the
applied prior art, the applied prior art must be such that it
would have provided one of ordinary skill in the art with both a
motivation to carry out the claimed invention and a reasonable
expectation of success in doing so. See In re Vaeck, 947 F.2d
488, 493, 20 USPQ2d 1438, 1442 (Fed. Cir. 1991); In re O=Farrell,
853 F.2d 894, 902, 7 USPQ2d 1673, 1680 (Fed. Cir. 1988).
Savu teaches that the disclosed surfactant derived from
nonafluorobutanesulfonyl fluoride has surface activity that
rivals those of the homologs made from perfluorooctane segments
such as perfluorooctanesulfonyl fluoride, can be produced at
lower cost, is potent and, unlike the surfactants derived from
perfluorooctanesulfonyl fluoride, is expected to break down into
degradation products when exposed to biologic, thermal,
oxidative, hydrolytic and photolytic conditions found in the
environment (page 2, lines 13-25; page 3, lines 4-12; page 14,
lines 4-6). This disclosure would have motivated one of ordinary
skill in the art to use Savu=s surfactant in the compositions of
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