Page 6
Appeal No. 1998-1373
Application No. 08/377,473
conclusion that the combined teachings of Heyl and Clark establish a prima facie case of
obviousness with regard to the subject matter recited in claim 1, and the rejection is
sustained.
The appellants have chosen to group together claims 1-3, 7-13, 20, 21, 23, 24, 26
3
and 27, and have not argued the merits of any of these claims apart from the others in the
group. Therefore, the rejection of these claims is sustained along with representative
claim 1. See 37 CFR § 1.192(c)(7) and Section 1206 of the Manual of Patent Examining
Procedure.
Dependent claims 4-6 stand rejected on the basis of Heyl, Clark and Jelich. Claim
4 adds to claim 1 the requirement that there be means for detecting a clogging condition of
the second filter unit, which means is not shown in the drawings but is described on page
10 of the specification as comprising “a conventional pressure differential gauge.” Jelich
is directed to a device for filtering dust from gases. One of ordinary skill in the art would
have been appraised by Jelich of the problem of malfunctioning filters, and would have
been taught to utilize sensors to determine whether this condition exists, whereupon the
filter is reverse flushed with a blast of air to remove the particles that have clogged it.
3 While claims 22 and 25 were included in this group, they were rejected on different
grounds, and the appellants argued that they were separately patentable on page 9 of the
Brief.
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