Appeal No. 1997-2105 Application No. 08/426,160 The prior set forth below is relied upon by the examiner as evidence of obviousness: Bridgeford 3,502,547 Mar. 24, 1970 Sampath et al. (Sampath) 5,326,436 Jul. 5, 1994 The admitted prior art shown in Figure 1 of the appellant’s drawing All of the appealed claims stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over the admitted prior art in view of Sampath with or without Bridgeford. OPINION We cannot sustain this rejection. We agree with the appellant that the Sampath and Bridgeford references contain no teaching or suggestion of providing the admitted prior art fractionator with a separation tray and downpipe at a location between the bottoms liquid hold-up pool and the vapor feed contacting zone as required by the independent claims on appeal. Neither of these patents discloses and would not have suggested a separation and downpipe of the type and at the location claimed by the appellant. Indeed, the arrangements shown in these patents, such as the trough/baffle arrangement of Sampath and the plate/downpipe arrangement of Bridgeford, are 4Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 NextLast modified: November 3, 2007