Appeal No. 1998-3168
Application No. 08/420,730
the preheating period for the operation of digesters. This
motivation is expressly stated by Dean (page 1, column 1,
lines 36 et seq.).
Appellant contends at page 6 of the principal brief that
Dean is non-analogous prior art because "[n]ot only does the
disclosure of Dean apply solely to batch digesters, but the
disclosure of Dean applies to old obsolete batch digesters."
However, appellant's own specification states that the present
invention is applicable to continuous or batch digesters (page
2, lines 19-21).
Appellant also maintains that "[b]oth the disclosure of
Dean and other conventional batch digester recovery systems
are limited to the recovery of heat from vapor and none employ
the hot spent cooking liquids as does the present invention"
(page 7 of principal brief, last paragraph). However, it is
our view that appellant ascribes too narrow an interpretation
of Dean by one of ordinary skill in the art. In our view, one
of ordinary skill in the art would have understood Dean as
teaching the production of a pure form of steam from
sufficiently hot streams of a paper milling process, be they
liquid or vapor.
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