Appeal No. 2006-3273 Page 4
Application No. 09/858,188
As appellants point out (Brief, page 5), Townsend “does not teach or
suggest an olefin content of greater than about 15 percent, as recited in claim 16.
. . .” Instead, as appellants point out (id.), Townsend is primarily directed to
reducing the concentrations of olefins. In this regard, we note that Townsend
reports the olefin concentration of one industry average (I/A) gasoline to be
9.7 vol. %. Townsend, Table 1. As appellants point out (Brief, page 6), following
the teachings of Townsend (see e.g., column 3, lines 37-412),
with an average olefin concentration of 9.7 percent, a 10 to 70 [%]
reduction in the olefin concentration would result in olefin
concentrations of 8.7 and 2.8 percent, respectively. These reduced
concentrations of olefins are much lower that [sic] the level of
“greater than about 15 percent” recited in claim 16. . . .
We recognize the examiner’s arguments on pages 5-6 of the Answer,
which rely on column 7, lines 1-26 and 41-45 of Townsend. However, upon
close inspection of Townsend, we find that the examiner appears to have
misread Townsend’s disclosure.
At column 6, lines 43-65, Townsend discloses “another embodiment of . . .
[their] invention.” This embodiment is directed to a reformulated gasoline that
comprises:
(a) a concentration of total aromatics in the range of about 10 to
about 25 volume percent; (b) a concentration of olefins in the range
of about 4 to about 10 volume percent; (c) a concentration of sulfur
not exceeding about 100 parts by million by weight; and (d) a
concentration of oxygen in the range of about 1 to about 4 weight
percent.
2 At column 3, lines 37-41, Townsend teach “[i]t is also preferred that the concentration of olefinic
compounds is reduced in the reformulated gasoline in an amount ranging from about 10 to about
70 percent of the olefins in the unreformulated gasoline. . . .”
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