Appeal No. 96-3874
Application 08/308,186
Pirsch for the purpose of dampening pressure pulses such as
taught by each of the secondary references. Implicit in the
examiner’s rejection is the position that the proposed
modification of Smith would result in a dampening assembly that
corresponds to the claimed assembly in all respects.
We will not sustain this rejection. At the outset, it is
questionable whether it would have been obvious as a general
proposition to provide an accumulator in the dampening system of
Smith in view of the collective teachings of the applied
references. Admittedly, it is well known, as a general
proposition, that vibrations may be caused by pressure pulsations
at the beginning and end of the delivery stroke of a pump, and
that these pulsations can be minimized by utilizing an
accumulator device in communication with the liquid being pumped.
The secondary references to Plager, Miller and Pirsch teach as
much. However, it is not apparent, nor has the examiner
explained, why one of ordinary skill in the art would have
appreciated this circumstance to be applicable to Smith’s
printing press dampening apparatus. In this regard, Smith does
not indicate that system pump 128 or any of the metering pumps3
3See column 5, line 34-51. Presumably the cylindrically
shaped object seen in Smith’s Figure 1 between the filter 127 and
the check valve 129 constitutes the pump in question.
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