Appeal No. 2001-0058 Page 6
Application No. 281,815
of the vehicle, as is required by claim 1. Geeraert has been cited by the examiner as
teaching that the fuel of a vehicle can be used as an ingredient of a combustible mixture
that is emitted from the vehicle. However, we cannot agree with the examiner that
Geeraert would have suggested to one of ordinary skill in the art that the Lager system be
modified to utilize vehicle fuel as an ingredient in the countermeasure material that is
emitted from the vehicle. We arrive at this conclusion because Lager requires that the
ingredients be an oxidizer and a material from the group which includes “alkyl and aryl
amines, hydrazine hydrate, the metallo-organics (tributyl-ethyl, etc.) and aniline” (column 3,
lines 6-10), that is, materials which when properly mixed with an oxidizer give rise to a
product that is self-igniting. There is no evidence upon which to base the conclusion that
the fuel of the vehicle would meet this requirement. Nor, in our view, would the combined
teachings of Lager and Geeraert have suggested to one of ordinary skill in the art that the
Lager system be changed from one in which the cloud is ignited after the material leaves
the dispenser to one in which it is ignited in the dispenser, for this would require that the
essence of the Lager invention be discarded, which would have been a disincentive to an
artisan to do so. Further in this regard, we find nothing in these two references from which
one of ordinary skill in the art would have learned to achieve the required separation
between the vehicle and the countermeasure by creating a gelled medium and then
passing it through an apertured plate to change it into particle form and at such a rate and
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