Appeal No. 96-1548
Application 08/288,127
contacts the strands and draws and continuously conveys the
strands through the length of the pipe”.
Oki discloses a cooking process for pasta (noodles) where
the raw materials along with warm water are poured into the
inflow tank and heated while passing through the water conduit
pipe by hot water around the pipes (Oki, page 6, “(Effect)”;
page 8, last paragraph). Oki teaches that there is no direct
heating of the warm water surrounding the noodles but the
noodles are boiled and cooked in the boiling water conduit by
the hot water in the water conduit tank (page 10). Oki does
teach vertical flow (i.e., gravitational flow) from the inlet
to the outlet end of the pipes (page 8, last paragraph, and
Figure 1).
The examiner applies Ohki (cited by Oki as “Prior Art” at
page 3) to show the cooking of pasta or noodles by conveying
the hot water and noodles in cooking tubes (see the Final
Rejection, page 2). However, Ohki does not disclose a
vertical or gravitational flow of noodles and water but uses a
vacuum pump to produce a partial vacuum to convey the noodles
through the pipe structure (see Ohki, pages 2, 6 and 7). In
fact, Ohki teaches away from the use of gravitational flow
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Last modified: November 3, 2007