Appeal 2007-1678
Application 09/800,547
6, 8, 9-11, 13-16, 18-26, and 28. Appellants do not dispute any of the
findings or conclusions of law contained in the prior decision.
In accordance with the findings we made in the prior Decision and the
findings we make below, we conclude that a preponderance of the evidence
supports a prima facie case of obviousness.
B. Facts
The following facts are supported by a preponderance of the evidence:
1. Trainor describes a process for preparing salad dressings. The
process includes a step of pre-mixing raw ingredients to form a
coarse emulsion and pumping the mixture, a coarse emulsion,
directly to a colloid mill (e.g., Ex. 1). A colloid mill is a
mixer/emulsifier. Therefore, Trainor feeds a coarse emulsion
through an in-line mixer/emulsifier.
2. The raw ingredients fed into the pre-mixer of Trainor include a
cooked starch paste (aqueous phase), another aqueous mixture
including emulsifiers (emulsifier phase), and liquid salad grade
vegetable oil (oil phase) (Trainor, col. 3, ll. 59 to col. 4, l. 29).
3. Trainor describes processing the coarse emulsion in a single
pass through the colloid mill (Fig. 1; col. 6, ll. 19-41).
4. Example 4 of Trainor describes a process having a throughput
rate within the claimed rate (6000 pounds per hour equals 100
pounds per minute). As is evidenced by the Examples, the
throughput rate may vary (compare Ex. 1 (11 lbs./min) and Ex.
4 (100 lbs./min.)).
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