Appeal 2006-2094
Application 10/339,797
Claim 42 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over
Doyle. It is the Examiner’s position that it would have been obvious to a person of
ordinary skill in the art to separate the olefins present in the composition depending
upon the desired product (Answer 5-6). The Examiner’s position is consistent with
the disclosure in Doyle appearing in column 4, lines 63 to 65. Appellants argue
that Doyle contains no suggestion or motivation to separate species within the
composition into any specific arrangement (Br. 9). Appellants further argue that
the Examiner has used impermissible hindsight in order to arrive at the claimed
invention (Reply Br. 1-2). Appellants’ arguments are not persuasive. Doyle
discloses that the object of the invention is to provide a process by which olefins
having special structure features can conveniently be prepared (col. 1, ll. 31-34).
The Examples provided by Doyle describe olefin compositions that comprise a
predominant amount of liner alpha olefins. Doyle discloses that the alpha olefins
are recovered by conventional distillation techniques. As such, a person of
ordinary skill in the art would be capable of determining the distillation
requirements for achieving a desired composition comprising a predominant
amount of linear alpha olefins.
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