Appeal No. 2002-0998
Application 09/296,139
urges (final rejection, page 2) that Sabo “discloses the claimed
invention but does not disclose that the chamber is air tight,
that the thermoplastic material of the tank has a flexural
modulus of at least 175,000 psi, or that the material can resist
a load of approximately 10 to 25 inches of Hg.” The examiner
then contends that McGouran teaches that it is known to provide
an underground tank with an air tight chamber, and concludes that
it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at
the time of appellants’ invention “to provide the tank of Sabo
with the chamber being air tight, as taught by McGouran, Jr., in
order to properly seal the chamber and prevent fluids or gases to
[sic] contaminate the contents of the tank.”
In accounting for the other differences identified above as
lacking in Sabo, the examiner further contends that it would have
been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to form the
plastic tank of Sabo from thermoplastic material having a
flexural modulus of at least 175,000 psi and capable of resisting
loading of approximately 10 to 25 inches of Hg, “in order to give
the tank the desired strength and since it has been held that
‘where the general conditions of the claims are disclosed in the
prior art, it is not inventive to discover the optimum or
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