Appeal No. 1999-0615
Application No. 08/786,974
that "[t]he prior art discloses some high-expansion foam fire
fighting systems, both portable and fixed installations."
In contrast to the examiner's position (answer, pages 4-
5) that it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in
the art at the time of appellant's invention to modify the
invention of Good "to generate fire suppressant foam" and to
provide the backpack system of Good with each of appellant's
recited components necessary for generating such a fire
suppressant foam, we note that none of the prior art applied
by the examiner teaches or suggests a fire suppressant foam
generating apparatus which is of a size so as to be mountable
on the backpack of Good. Each of the patents relied upon by
the examiner that relates to a foam generating system
discloses large arrangements, e.g., for a fixed storage
building (Stults) or for drawing a foamable liquid from an
open storage drum (Farison). Thus, while we might, in the
abstract, agree with the examiner that it would have been
obvious to one of ordinary skill in the fire fighting art to
use a foam fire suppressant material instead of the liquid
(e.g., water) in the tank of Good, we see no basis in the
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