Appeal No. 97-1002
Application 08/014,379
discharge arrangement. There is agreement that Melanson teaches
the use of a disk-shaped varistor wafer in series with a gap
electrode. Thus, neither of these references teaches a transient
voltage surge suppression circuit using only varistors as
claimed. Although the examiner argues that it would have been
obvious to eliminate the spark gap from the references, there is
no suggestion for this modification in either Zisa or Melanson.
If Zisa and Melanson could have achieved the same function
without the spark gap, they were apparently not aware of it. Any
suggestion to use only varistors with no other components for
clipping transient voltage surges and shunting surge currents to
ground comes from appellant’s own disclosure and not from the
teachings of the applied prior art. Thus, this particular
feature of independent claims 1 and 14 is not taught or suggested
by the applied references. This finding alone is sufficient for
us not to sustain this particular rejection of claims 4, 5 and
14-17.
Notwithstanding our decision to reverse this rejection of
claims 4, 5 and 14-17 based on the first point argued above, we
consider the second point as well in order to provide guidance to
appellant and the examiner. It is sufficient to say that the
patents to Zisa and Melanson do not support the teachings
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