Appeal No. 96-3741
Application No. 08/177,288
for controlling the gas flow to the enclosure’” and that
“[t]his is not disclosed in nor obvious from the German
reference” (brief, page 7). This argument is factually
erroneous and therefore unpersuasive in two respects. In the
first place, only claim 3 requires such a control means; claim
14 plainly does not. Secondly, and in any event, the German
reference unquestionably discloses such a control means (e.g.,
see element 8 of the drawing and the third full paragraph on
page 3 of the German translation of record). With the respect
to claim 12, we simply disagree with the appellants’ argument
that it would not have been obvious to provide the apparatus
of the German reference with an access door as required by
this claim. In our opinion, one with ordinary skill in the
art would have been motivated and found it obvious to provide
box 23 of the German apparatus with a door in order to obtain
access to the apparatus components within the box for purposes
of service such as cleaning, repair or replacement.
Moreover, we are unconvinced by appellants’ argument
concerning the vacuum chamber feature of claim 15.
Significantly, this argument addresses only the German
reference rather than the combination of the German and
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