Appeal No. 2004-0616
Application 09/692,982
and 18 through 20 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable
over Ripka in view of Chase.
The last of the examiner’s rejections for our review is that
of claims 1, 4 through 6, 8 through 11, 14 through 16 and 18
through 20 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over
Reinke. The examiner’s basis for this rejection is set forth on
pages 6 through 8 of the answer and appears to be premised on the
examiner’s belief that it would have been merely an obvious
matter of design choice for one of ordinary skill in the art to
size the transition region seen as the ramp at the beginning of
passageway (14) in Figure 1 of Reinke to have a length in the
range specified in appellants’ claims on appeal,
since applicant has not disclosed how, the
length of said transition being defined by
the following relationship: 1.7ŠL/DhaŠ7.0
wherein, L/Dha = The ratio of transition
length (L) to the average hydraulic diameter
(Dha) over the entire transition length, and
wherein the hydraulic diameter Dh is defined
as: Dh=4A/P, where A is the cross sectional
area of the flow passage, P is the wetted
perimeter, the transition length is further
defined by the following relationship
2.6ŠL/DhaŠ6.1, 2 inchesŠLŠ8 inches, 3
inchesŠLŠ7 inches solves any problem in a
new way or provides unexpected results that
would be unobvious to one of ordinary skill
in the art since the length of Reinke et al
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