Appeal No. 2001-1186
Application No. 08/819,609
applied to provide the current volume of fuel in a tank. In our
view, the techniques utilized by these three references are so
opposite in approach that any attempt to combine them could only
come from Appellants’ own disclosure and not from any teaching or
suggestion in the references themselves.
We have reviewed the Ellinger and Zfira references applied
by the Examiner to address, respectively, the specific gravity
determination feature of dependent claim 8 and the ultrasonic
transducer features of dependent claims 11 and 15. We find
nothing in either of these references which would overcome the
innate deficiencies in Grills, I. H. Cohn, and G. I. Cohn
discussed supra.
In view of the above discussion, since it is our opinion
that the Examiner has not established a prima facie case of
obviousness, we do not sustain the Examiner’s 35 U.S.C. § 103(a)
rejection of independent claims 1 and 9, nor of claims 2-8, 10,
11, 14, and 15 dependent thereon.
We also do not sustain the Examiner’s obviousness rejection
of independent claim 12, as well as dependent claims 13, 17, and
18 in which the Johnson reference was applied to the combination
of Grills, G. I. Cohn, and Breed to address the ultrasonic
transducer feature of these claims. We agree with Appellants
8
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