Appeal No. 1996-2809
Application No. 08/399,961
of incorporating features in the dependent claims in the
electrochemical cell described in Saprokhin.
Having reviewed the record, we agree with appellants that
the prior art references as a whole would not have suggested
to one of ordinary skill in the art to place an outer gas
separator equidistance between the anode assembly and the
cathode of the electrochemical cell described in Saprokhin.
See, e.g., Brief, pages 15 and 16. The purpose of Saprokhin
is to employ an anode having internal fluorine passages,
rather than external fluorine passages, in its electrochemical
cell to obtain various advantages thereof. See column 3,
lines 1-15. To accommodate fluorine leaving the internal
fluorine passages of the anode assembly, a gas impermeable
barrier is placed on the upper part of the anode assembly.
See Figure 1 in conjunction with column 2, lines 40-46. There
simply is no reason or incentive to place a gas impermeable
barrier equidistance between the anode assembly and the
cathode to form external fluorine passages. This is
especially true since sufficient fluorine passages are already
internally available in the anode assembly of the
electrochemical cell described in Saprokhin. Note also that
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