Appeal No. 1997-0537
Application No. 07/749,554
appellant that the examiner's rejections are not sustainable.
We consider first the examiner's rejection of claims 1
and 7 under § 102 over Mindler. Although the apparatus of
Mindler, unlike the claimed apparatus, discloses a fluid inlet
that is located near the bottom of chamber 10 which is
generally below the fluid outlet at flume 19, the examiner has
somewhat imaginatively focused upon a portion of the chamber
between cylinders 13 and 15, 33 and 35, and 53 and 55 to
define three vertically arranged chambers which meet the
claimed requirements of having a fluid inlet located above the
fluid outlet wherein a volume of fluid has a downward flow.
However, as accurately pointed out by appellant, this area of
Mindler's mixing zone does not meet the claim requirement of a
chamber "adapted to retain a volume of said contact media
within the chamber while allowing the downward flow of fluid
through the contact media" (claim 1, lines 5-7, emphasis
added). The area between cylinders 15 and 16 of Mindler is
not adapted to retain a volume of contact media but, rather,
the system of Mindler provides for co-current flow of resin
and water through the mixing zone and into the separating zone
(column 5, lines 11 et seq). While the examiner states that
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