Appeal 2007-0295
Application 09/051,565
According to Appellant, the invention is directed to a device for
eliminating unwanted volatile components from a beer wort and to a method
of eliminating volatile components using this device (Br. 3). Independent
claims 28 and 63 are representative of the invention and a copy of these
claims may be found in the Appendix to Appellant’s Brief.
In addition to Appellant’s admitted prior art (hereafter APA), the
Examiner relies on the following references as evidence of obviousness:
Krüger US 4,550,029 Oct. 29, 1985
Robert H. Perry and Don Green, Perry’s Chemical Engineers’ Handbook,
18-19 to 18-37 (6th ed., 1984) (hereinafter Perry).
ISSUES ON APPEAL
Claims 28, 32, 33, 36-40, 43-48, 50, 53, and 55-70 stand rejected
under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over Appellant’s admissions in
view of Krüger and Perry (Answer 3).2
Appellant contends that the only admission is that people in the beer
industry have tried to eliminate unwanted volatile aromatic components
from beer wort (Br. 11).
Nov. 1, 2002 (Br. 2). Appellant further states that a “supplemental
amendment” cancelling claim 54 was filed on Dec. 23, 2002, and “should be
entered” (Br. 3). The Examiner does not specifically indicate that this
amendment was entered but notes that claim 54 has been cancelled (Answer
2, ¶ (8)). Accordingly, for purposes of this appeal, we consider the
amendment dated Dec. 23, 2002, as entered and claim 54 cancelled.
2 The Examiner erroneously includes some cancelled claims in the statement
of the rejection (Answer 3). However, we deem this error harmless since
Appellant is aware of the claims involved in this rejection (Br. 8-9).
2
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Last modified: September 9, 2013