Appeal No. 1997-3785
Application No. 08/527,591
The examiner bases the above position on lines 8-10 of
the English abstract of the Cmejrek reference, to wit:
“Required heat is derived from combustion fumes, hot gas, hot
air or a combination of these” (Answer, page 8). In our
opinion, even giving this sentence its most charitable
interpretation, it falls short of justifying the examiner’s
position that the addition of the last step of the appellants’
claim to the Greco system would have been obvious, for it is a
very broad statement that provides no specific suggestion to
raise the temperature of the clean gases prior to
recirculation to purge the regenerators. This conclusion is
confirmed by the understanding of the Cmejrek system we
obtained by considering the translation of the entire
reference. 2
Cmejrek is concerned with the problem of purging unwanted
materials from a heat exchanger, and teaches doing so by the
use of the gases exhausted from a boiler or the like and
“cleaned” by a treatment device such as a catalytic converter
(Figure 1). However, Cmejrek accomplishes this in a manner
2This document was supplied by the appellants and was the
basis upon which many of their arguments were grounded.
However, it apparently was not considered by the examiner.
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