Appeal No 2007-0310
Application No 10/260,498
that “Pazos teaches a method of preparing an ethylene oxide-capped polyol.”
(Answer 5-6.)
The Examiner states that Pazos differs from claim 25 in that Pazos
does not “expressly teach adding acid to the EO-capped polyol.” (Answer 8.)
However, the Examiner argues that Pazos teaches “that following
ethoxylation, the EO-capped product is typically purified to remove catalyst
residues,” “that any suitable means of purifying the polyol can be used,” and
that one of the references cited by Pazos is Herold, “which purifies the polyol
by neutralization with an acid.” (Id.) Thus, the Examiner argues that “use of
an acid is implicitly taught” by Pazos and that “one having ordinary skill in
the art would have been motivated to utilize dodecylbenzenesulfonic acid, as
taught by Nagata et al., or lactic acid, as taught by Doerge et al., in the
process of Pazos for the same reasons the skilled artisan would substitute said
dodecylbenzene sulfonic acid and/or lactic acid for the mineral acids in the
process of Herold.” (Id.)
The Examiner also notes that “Pazos differs from [claim 25] when the
base-catalyzed polyol content is greater than 10 wt.% and the basic catalyst
content is [not] less than about 0.0375 wt.%.” (Answer 6.) However, the
Examiner concludes that these features would have been obvious “because
changes in temperature, concentrations, or other process conditions of an old
process do[] not impart patentability unless the recited ranges are critical,
i.e., they produce a new and unexpected result.” (Id.)
We conclude that the Examiner has set forth a prima facie case that
the method of claim 25 would have been obvious. Pazos describes a
“process for making ethylene oxide-capped polyols from double metal
9
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Next
Last modified: September 9, 2013