Appeal No. 95-2944
Application No. 07/986,771
and claims 21 through 26 stand correspondingly rejected over
these references and further in view of Rünkel.
Neither of these rejections can be sustained.
We agree with the appellants that the references applied by
the examiner contain no teaching or suggestion of an outlet tube
disposed proximate and substantially parallel to an elongate
heater as required by the claims on appeal. The examiner’s view
that Fleissner and Stelling would have suggested this claim
feature is based upon clearly erroneous findings of fact.
Specifically, the examiner has made clearly erroneous findings
with respect to the disclosures of both Fleissner and Stelling,
each of which alone is fatal to the rejection before us.
Concerning Fleissner, while screen cover 10 may function as
an elongate heater, the examiner is clearly incorrect in
believing that patentee’s Figure 9 shows “unheated air is
accelerated through chamber 9 in a plane parallel to thread path
6 [and thus parallel to cover 10 which serves as an elongate
heater]” (Answer, page 6; emphasis in original). In fact, the
flow arrows near the bottom of Figure 9 unambiguously show that
the air flow is transverse, not parallel, to thread path 6 and
correspondingly “elongate heater” or cover 10. The examiner’s
confusion in this regard may have arisen by a failure to
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