Appeal No. 2006-2357
Application No. 10/666,262
addressed in the examiner’s answer. Accordingly, this
application is remanded to the examiner for consideration and
analysis of appellants’ specification data.
The examiner should give consideration to the points made at
page 4 of our remand in the related appeal. Also, while
appellants maintain at page 7 of the principal brief that
“cellulose fibers treated with what was heretofore considered to
be biocidally effective amounts DDAC or DDAB, have required
significantly higher energy input for refining and are also
subject to considerable degradation during the refining process,”
the examiner should consider whether the specification results,
which assertedly use relatively smaller amounts of DDAC and DDAB,
are truly unexpected with respect to requiring less energy. It
would appear that one would expect that using lesser amounts of
DDAC and DDAB would require less energy and achieve less fiber
degradation. It also noteworthy that, as stated by the examiner,
Canadian ‘564 teaches that the total amount of biocidal salt
impregnate is at least one percent, which falls within the
claimed range of concentration. Accordingly, the examiner should
weigh the evidence of obviousness for using the claimed amount of
DDAB and DDAC, which may also include a copper salt, against any
truly unexpected results, i.e., the examiner must weigh the
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