Appeal No. 99-0029
Application 08/595,967
The claims on appeal are drawn to a burner assembly, and are reproduced in the appendix to
appellant's brief.
The references applied in the final rejection are:
Henderson et al. (Henderson) 3,753,658 Aug. 21, 1973
Hess 5,060,984 Oct. 29, 1991
Vatsky 5,347,937 Sep. 20, 1994
Claims 29 to 32 stand finally rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as unpatentable over Vatsky in
view of Hess and Henderson.
Since appellant states on page 3 of the brief that claims 29 to 32 are in the same group, we
select independent claim 29 from the group and shall decide the appeal based thereon. 37 CFR §
1.192(c)(7).3
The basis of the rejection is stated on pages 3 to 6 of the examiner's answer, and need not be
repeated here.
First considering the Hess reference, appellant argues that it would not have been obvious to
employ the low wear elbow disclosed therein with the Vatsky burner apparatus, essentially because
there would have been no suggestion or motivation to do so. According to appellant, the only basis for
(July 1998).
3In reviewing the claims, we note that the term "splitters" in claim 29, line 11 and claim 32, line
1, does not appear to have antecedent basis in the specification, as required by 37 CFR
§ 1.75(d)(1).
2
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