Appeal No. 97-1017
Application No. 08/391,421
requires the presence of a third valve and is not specific as
to where it should be located.
The teachings of Mitobe and Hashimoto thereby establish a
prima facie case of obviousness with regard to the subject
matter of claim 28, and we will sustain this rejection.
However, we reach the opposite conclusion with regard to
claim 29, which adds to claim 28 the requirement that two
valves be served by the first outlet section and the third
valve by the second outlet section. As argued by the
appellants, such a placement of the valves is not taught by
the references, and therefore a prima facie case of
obviousness is lacking and the rejection cannot be sustained.
Nor will we sustain the rejection of claims 30 through
37, for adding Miyano to the other two references does not, in
our view, overcome the valve placement problem which arises
with respect to claim 29, from which the remaining claims are
dependent.
We have carefully considered all of the appellants’
arguments as they apply to the rejections which we have
sustained. While we have not commented specifically upon all
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