Appeal No. 96-0760
Application No. 08/051,210
At the outset, since, with the exception of claim 3, all
the appealed claims stand or fall together, we will limit our
discussion to the examiner's rejection of claim 1.
We concur with the examiner that the system defined by
claim 1 on appeal would have been obvious to one of ordinary
skill in the art in view of the collective teachings of Myers,
Bruening, Tsuji and Thomas. In re Keller, 642 F.2d 413, 426,
208 USPQ 871, 882 (CCPA 1981). As explained by the examiner,
Myers, like appellants, discloses a system for sampling and
determining the presence of nitrogen-containing and aromatic
contaminants in items, such as bottles, by directing fluid
into the item to displace vapors of the contaminants and,
subsequently, evacuating a sample of the displaced vapors for
analytical testing. While Myers does not disclose the claimed
"means for splitting the evacuated sample into first and
second portions," we agree with the examiner that it would
have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art to do
so in view of the Tsuji disclosure, which specifically teaches
a means for dividing the flow of a sample gas into a plurality
of samples for detection and analysis. Also, although Myers
discloses the use of various ionization techniques to detect,
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