Appeal No. 2006-1158
Application No. 10/052,733
The following reference is relied upon by the examiner as
evidence of obviousness:
Vayssie et al. (Vayssie) 5,073,174 Dec. 17, 1991
Claim 1 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being
obvious over Vayssie.
We refer to the Brief and to the Answer for a complete
exposition of the opposing viewpoints expressed by the
appellants and by the examiner concerning the above-noted
rejection.
OPINION
We will sustain this rejection for the reasons well-stated
by the examiner in his answer. We add the following comments
for emphasis only.
It is undisputed that Vayssie discloses 2-hydroxymethyl-4-
aminophenol and 2-(ß-hydroxyethyl)-4-aminophenol as precursors
for hair dye (e.g., see the abstract and lines 41-42 in
column 3) and that these compounds are respectively a one-carbon
homolog and a structural isomer of the appellants’ claimed
compound. It is the examiner’s basic position that one having
ordinary skill in this art would have been motivated to modify
either one of these prior art compounds in such a manner as to
obtain a 4-Amino-2-(1-hydroxy-ethyl)-phenol (as here claimed)
-2-
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007