Appeal No. 2007-0358
Application 10/873,477
To the extent that Applicants believe that the term “specific areas” specifies
some sort of “jet arrangement” not described in the prior art, we reject such a
notion. As we discussed above, the term “specific areas” broadly encompasses any
number of areas without any limitation as to specific location. The term therefore
reads on the “jet arrangement” disclosed in Figure 1 of DE ‘670.
For these reasons, we affirm the examiner’s 35 U.S.C. § 102(b) rejection.
Claim 11 -- 35 U.S.C. § 103(a)
Appealed claim 11 requires the “spraying device to provide a more intensive
spraying of a respective region in response to the sensing by said sensor [recited in
appealed claim 10] of a condition in the dishwasher indicating that items in the
respective region have a soil condition requiring a more intensive spraying.” As
discussed, neither the claim nor the specification places any limitation on the
“respective region.” It is therefore appropriate to construe this term to encompass
any region within the dishwasher including the vicinity of the spray device outlet.
DE ‘670 does not teach the use of an automated condition sensor to control
the spraying intensity at a respective region of a spraying device as recited in
appealed claim 11. Nevertheless, DE ‘670 teaches that when the dishes are heavily
soiled, the spray intensity should be increased by reducing the number of active
sprays. (Translation at 3, lines 3-18.)
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