Appeal No. 2006-2423 Page 9
Application No. 10/297,871
Other issues
Claim 24 has an optional step in which a “pretreatment preparation is applied” to
the keratin fibers. It is not evident from the record whether the examiner required this
step to act in concert with the colorant M2, or whether it could include steps such as
shampooing or conditioning hair prior to the colorant treatment. We do not find any
limitation in the claim that would exclude the pretreatment preparation from being a
shampoo, conditioner, gel, tonic, or other conventional hair care product. The
application discloses hair tonics and other hair products that contain pyridoxine or its
derivatives. Specification, page 4, lines 3-12. Upon return of the application to the
technology center, we suggest the examiner consider the patentability of the method
claims in view of this prior art and others like it.
We also notice that the STIC search report utilized structural searching to identify
prior art. Word searching with “vitamin B6”, “pyridoxine,” or other pertinent terms may
also identify relevant prior art. In this regard, Komai describes a hair color dye with
pyridoxine (column 5, lines 67) and Oberthur discloses the addition of B6 analogs to
temporary and permanent hair dye (column 10, lines 27-28). The relevance of these
patents to the claimed subject matter should be considered, including the instant
method claims.
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