Appeal No. 1999-0046
Application No. 08/442,103
Considering first the examiner’s rejection of claims 34-
43, 48, 49, 51, 52, 54 and 64-67 as being unpatentable over
Meijburg in view of AP, the essence of the rejection is the
examiner’s determination that it would have been obvious to
one of ordinary skill in the art “to employ in Meijburg a
central inlet feeding distribution canals [sic] for the
purpose of providing uniform heat exchange as recognized by
AP” (answer, page 4). Precisely how or why distribution
canals of the type recognized by AP are to be “employed” in
Meijburg is not spelled out by the examiner, although we are
informed by the examiner on page 4 of the answer that “[s]ince
Meijburg and AP are both from the same field of endeavor, the
purpose disclosed by AP would have been recognized in the
pertinent art of Meijburg.”
We shall not sustain this rejection. At the outset, we
observe that the manner in which Meijburg and AP operate is
fundamentally different in that in Meijburg the medium to be
heated flows back and forth through the heat exchanger in a
number of passes, whereas in AP the medium flowing through the
heat exchanger flows in a single pass therethrough.
Accordingly, employing AP’s distribution canals in Meijburg
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