Appeal No. 2000-1230
Application No. 08/717,904
The claims on appeal are drawn to a boat assembly (claims
1 to 3, 12 and 13) and a sewage holding tank (claims 14, 15
and 21), and are reproduced in the appendix of appellants’
brief.
Appellants disclose that in a conventional sewage
assembly for a boat, as illustrated in Fig. 1, it has been
recognized that pumping out the sewage holding tank 17, which
is typically made of plastic, for a period of time after the
tank has emptied can result in damage to the tank, or
implosion (page 1, lines
5 to 17). Appellants’ invention solves this problem by
providing a vacuum relief means 40 on the tank, preferably in
the form of a vent check valve. Two embodiments of such a
valve are disclosed, of which appellants elected the
embodiment of Figs. 4 to 7 for prosecution in response to the
examiner’s requirement for an election of species (Paper No.
4).
The prior art applied in the final rejection is:
Kinsey 1,164,098 Dec. 14,
1915
2
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