during any of the processes for preparation of the compounds of the present invention it may be necessary and or desirable to protect sensitive or reactive groups on any of the molecules concerned this may be achieved by means of conventional protecting groups such as those described in protective groups in organic chemistry ed j f w mcomie plenum press 1973 and t w greene amp p g m wuts protective groups in organic synthesis john wiley amp sons 1991 the protecting groups may be removed at a convenient subsequent stage using methods known from the art the following examples describe the invention in greater detail and are intended to illustrate the invention but not to limit it a reactor was charged with daf sulfamide base and solvent as described in table 1 while agitating the reaction mixture was heated and held at the desired temperature and for the selected amount of time as listed in table 2 for experimental runs 101 102 103 the mixture was distilled at 41 u00b0 c under vacuum for 30 35 and 20 minutes respectively the reaction mixtures were cooled to room temperature then extracted twice with about 50 ml of a 1m aqueous naoh solution an 0 3 m solution of aqueous naoh was used for experimental runs 101 108 the resulting basic product solution was neutralized using 6m aqueous hcl solution after crystallization the product solution was filtered and the wet cake was dried for between 16 20 hours about 22 hours for experimental runs 106 and 107 at about 50 u00b0 c under vacuum to yield topiramate product the dry product was analyzed by hplc a reactor was charged with daf sulfamide base and solvent.