Appeal No. 1997-2947
Application No. 08/352,079
The Prior Art Rejections
The examiner has made several prior art rejections under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a).
Specifically, the examiner has rejected: 1) claims 6-7 and 11-12 as unpatentable over Patil or
Dunne; 2) claim 8 as unpatentable over Patil or Dunne in view of Abe; and, 3) claims 6-8 and 11-
12 as unpatentable over Abe.4 Generally, the examiner has rejected the various claims in view of
the references descriptions of catalytic converters having a three-way catalyst coated onto a
honeycomb carrier and an adsorbent catalyst which is also formed on a honeycomb carrier.
(Examiner’s Answer, pages 6-8).
According to the examiner, the references fail to specifically describe appellants’ claimed
10-50 mm distance between the three-way catalyst and the adsorbent catalyst. The examiner
cites appellants’ specification as teaching that the claimed distance is not a critical feature of the
invention. From this, the examiner finds that it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill
in the art to employ appellants’ claimed distance as the general conditions of the claims are
disclosed in the prior art and it is not inventive to discover the optimum or workable ranges by
routine experimentation. In re Aller, 220 F.2d 454, 456, 105 USPQ 233, 235-236 (1955).
(Examiner’s Answer, pages 6 and 8).
4According to appellants’, claims 6, 8, 11 and 12 stand or fall together and claim 7 stands
or falls separately. Therefore, in accordance with the provisions of 37 CFR § 1.192(c)(7) (1996),
and since appellants have presented specific, substantive reasons for the separate patentability of
each group, we decide the grounds of rejection in this appeal on the basis of claims 6 and 7.
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