Appeal No. 2006-0767
Application No. 09/962,258
below.
OPINION
The examiner finds that Lipshutz discloses preparing an aryl compound by cross-
coupling a substituted aryl halide with a Grignard reagent in the presence of a nickel(O)
on charcoal catalyst, where the nickel catalyst is prepared by loading a support material
with an aqueous solution of a nickel compound (nickel nitrate) and reducing the nickel
compound using a reducing agent (n-BuLi or the corresponding Grignard
reagent)(Answer, page 3).
The examiner finds, and appellants do not dispute, that the only difference
between the process disclosed by Lipshutz and the claimed process is that Lipshutz
teaches slowly adding excess Grignard reagent to the entire aryl halide/catalyst/solvent
mixture while the claims on appeal require “adding only a part of the aryl halide initially
and then adding the remainder of the aryl halide during the introduction of the Grignard
reagent” (Answer, page 3; Brief, pages 4-5; section 2.2 on page 165 of Lipshutz; also
see claim 1 on appeal). From these findings, the examiner concludes that it would have
been obvious to one having ordinary skill in this art at the time of appellants’ invention
“to modify the order of addition of any of the ingredients of Lipshutz” in the absence of
new or unexpected results (Answer, page 3). We agree.
Appellants argue that, in their invention, the concentration of Grignard reagent in
the reaction mixture is always at a very low level, whereas according to the prior art the
3
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007