Appeal 2006-3265
Application 10/047,670
Appellants seek review of the Examiner’s rejection of claims 1, 5, 8,
11, and 13 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Kocher,
Brogan, or Turner in view of Dalo, Ryan, or Ando.1
The Examiner provides reasoning in support of the rejection in the
Answer (mailed March 27, 2006). Appellants present opposing arguments
in the Appeal Brief (filed January 25, 2006) and Reply Brief (filed May 22,
2006).
DISCUSSION
Appellants do not dispute that, if any of the primary references were
combined with any of the secondary references as proposed by the
Examiner, the subject matter of the rejected claims would result.
Accordingly, the issue before us in this appeal is whether it would have been
obvious to utilize the compression coupling technique of Kocher, Brogan, or
Turner to couple oval or flattened heat exchanger tubes, of the type
discussed by Dalo, Ryan, or Ando, to heat exchanger structure to arrive at
the subject matter of Appellants’ claims. Appellants contend that none of
the primary references is reasonably pertinent to the particular problem with
which Appellants were concerned, because they are directed toward
removable, round tube couplings, rather than to a brazed, and thus non-
removable, heat exchanger construction using a flat tube, and that there is
1 The Examiner’s application of so many prior art references in the
alternative hardly seems consistent with the instruction in Manual of Patent
Examining Procedure (MPEP) § 706.02 that “[p]rior art rejections should
ordinarily be confined strictly to the best available art …. Merely
cumulative rejections, i.e., those which would clearly fall if the primary
rejection were not sustained, should be avoided.”
4
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