Appeal No. 1998-0842
Application No. 08/536,350
converter. The appealed claims, drawn to apparatus (claims 1 to
7, 10 and 11) and a method (claims 8 and 9), are reproduced in
the appendix of appellant's brief.
The references applied in the final rejection are:
Colosimo 3,738,088 Jun. 12, 1973
Geiger 5,250,268 Oct. 5, 1993
Wells 5,509,853 Apr. 23, 1996
(filed Jul. 11, 1994)
An additional reference of record, applied herein pursuant
to a rejection under 37 CFR § 1.196(b), is:
Olivo 5,285,640 Feb. 15, 1994
Claims 1 to 11 stand finally rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103
as unpatentable over Colosimo alone, or in view of Wells and
Geiger. On page 3 of the final rejection (paper No. 7), the
examiner states the basis of the rejection as:
Colosimo teaches using means attached to a car to
clean ambient air. Colosimo also teaches that these
means can be catalytic convertors (see column 6 line
40). Colosimo does not teach that the treating means
be attached to the out side of the exhaust manifold or
the use of flared scoop. It would have been obvious to
a routineer in the art to attach the catalytic treating
means of Colosimo to the exhaust manifold to take
advantage of the heat source for the reaction and in
the fact that Wells teaches attaching ambient filter
means to the exhaust manifold (see figure 3, element
29) and that Geiger teaches that the temperature of the
catalytic convertor should be regulated.
In col. 6, line 40 of Colosimo, to which the examiner
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