Written by Mark Terry  In a quick decision today at the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences (BPAI), the Board reversed an Examiner’s 103 obviousness rejection in two sentences (Analysis section only). Quick work for a usually wordy Board. The case of Ex parte Erhan (Appeal No. 2011-008127) involved a method of making fatty acid ester derivatives. The claims involved processes of production of a ketal product in combination with the hydroxyl ester product. The Examiner rejected the claims based on 35 U.S.C. 103(a) for obviousness but wrote a sparse explanation of where the claim elements were found in the prior art. The Board began by