Appeal No. 2006-0201 Page 6
Application No. 10/125,272
additive together to form the granulate which is exactly what De Lima also teaches, see
examples of De Lima.” Examiner’s Answer, page 11.
We have reviewed the working examples described by De Lima and find none
that include combining a powder that can be compacted into a granule with an enzyme
and processing to produce granules. On the contrary, De Lima’s examples begin with
granular starch cores (see, e.g., column 24, lines 15 and 65). The examiner has
pointed to no specific example in De Lima that begins with a powder that is combined
with water, an enzyme, and an additive, and processed into granules.
Because the process taught by De Lima does not meet all the limitations of claim
1, we reverse the rejection under 35 U.S.C. § 102(e).
3. Obviousness based on De Lima and Yamada
The examiner rejected claims 1 and 3-36 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 on the basis that
the claimed process would have been obvious to those of ordinary skill in the art based
on the disclosures of De Lima and Yamada.2 The examiner characterized De Lima as
teaching the process defined in claim 1, although he acknowledged that De Lima “does
not teach using the specific amounts of components, such as trehalose or zinc sulfate
as the additive, etc.” Examiner’s Answer, page 5.
The examiner characterized Yamada as “teach[ing] that granular solid enzyme
preparations are stabilized by using trehalose and zinc sulfate,” and concluded that “[i]t
would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to use trehalose or zinc
sulfate instead of PVA as the additive in the enzyme granulate of De Lima since
2 Yamada et al., EP 501375 A1, published September 2, 1992
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