Appeal No. 2005-0766
Application No. 09/877,277
(ii) contacting the diolefins and mercaptans in the
presence of a Group VIII metal catalyst in a second
distillation reaction zone in the upper section of said
distillation column reactor thereby reacting a portion of
said mercaptans with a portion of the diolefins to form
sulfide products and a distillate product and
(iii) fractionating said full boiling range naphtha
into a light naphtha and a heavier naphtha, said heavier
naphtha containing said organic sulfur compounds and said
sulfide products;
(c) removing said distillate product as a first
overheads from said first distillation column reactor; and
(d) removing said heavier naphtha from said first
distillation column reactor as bottoms.
The references set forth below are relied upon by the
examiner in the Section 102 rejections before us:
Gildert et al. (Gildert) 6,083,378 Jul. 4, 2000
Podrebarac et al. (Podrebarac) 6,303,020 Oct. 16, 2001
All of the appealed claims are rejected under 35 U.S.C.
§ 102(e) as being anticipated by either Podrebarac or Gildert.1
We refer to the brief and to the answer for a thorough
exposition of the opposing viewpoints expressed by the appellant
and by the examiner concerning these rejections.
1On page 4 of the brief, the appellant indicates that the
appealed claims will stand or fall together. Accordingly, in
assessing the merits of the above noted rejections, we will focus
on claim 1, which is the sole independent claim before us.
3
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