Court Opinion

ID: 9452273
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 17:35:16.486145+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:33:08.762776
License: Public Domain

SMITH, Judge,
(dissenting).
In view of the admissions in the majority as to the defects in the prior art teachings, I am amazed to find that de*272spite these defects it would affirm the board. First, only the principal reference, Flett, discusses the lime soap problem, the secondary references being silent. Second, Flett discloses that aromatic sulfonic acids, a class of compounds known to possess the properties of surface activity and compatability with hard water, do not solve the lime soap problem.
Yet the majority finds it would be obvious because of the presence of these same properties in appellant’s sulfoxides to substitute them for the alkyl aromatic sulfonate mixtures in Flett. The defects in the board’s reasoning is readily admitted by the majority. However, instead of reversing the board’s decision, the majority on its own motion injects the teaching in Webb that an alkyl sulfoxide composition when tested, showed a reflectometer value of 58. This is, sua sponte, equated with a “cleaner, brighter wash.”
Appellant never has had the opportunity to answer such a rejection. It is only by reliance on this new reasoning and combining it with the known properties of sulfoxides — which admittedly did not cure the lime soap problem for Flett — that the majority can support its finding that the invention is obvious.
The invention here in general terms sets forth a solution to the lime soap problem which persisted at the time of appellant’s invention despite the prior art teachings relied on by the majority. The majority chooses not to discuss this fact. Rather, it views the invention as but a combination of the sulfoxides and a detergent soap composition, and nothing more.
In view of the admitted defects in the board’s reasoning and considering the claimed invention, I would reverse the decision of the board. It is contrary to my concepts of the judicial process that a rejection should be sustained for untested reasons first advanced by this court.