Appeal No. 2006-2023 Page 4
Application No. 10/650,785
disclosure of the ‘044 application, the ‘785 application is a continuation-in-part of
the ‘044 application (Office action, p. 2 (mailed 24 August 2004)).
10. The examiner determined that claims 1-26 of the ‘785 application had an
effective filing date of 29 August 2003 (Office action, p. 3 (mailed 24 August
2004)).
11. Patent application publication No. 2002/0121479 (“Mueller”) was published on 5
September 2002.
12. Therefore, according to the examiner, Mueller qualifies as prior art under 35
U.S.C. § 102(a) (Office action, p. 3 (mailed 24 August 2004)).
13. The examiner rejected claims 1-26 as being clearly anticipated by Mueller (Office
action, p. 3 (mailed 24 August 2004)).
14. Appellants did not contest the examiner’s contention that claims 1-26 are clearly
anticipated by Mueller, but rather argued that Mueller is not available as prior art
(Response to Office action, p. 7 (filed 21 January 2005)).
15. The ‘044 specification describes filtering water through “a membrane
system” (p. 2, lines 8-9), a “continuous fully suspended system,” wherein
the resin may conveniently be separated from the treated water by gravity
settling (p. 3, lines 30-31), and a “recycle system,” wherein settled resin is
mixed in hoppers to keep it in a fluid condition and to ensure uniform
concentration (p. 4, lines 10-12).
16. Specifically, the ‘044 application describes a process for removal of
dissolved organic carbon from water including the steps of: (a) adding an
ion-exchange resin to water containing dissolved organic carbon; (b)
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