Appeal No. 1997-3056
Application No. 08/377,966
“MiniKap 225/500 Microfiltration Modules,” Microgon, Inc.
Laguna Hills, CA USA, T88 8-0433 2.5M” (pub. date 7/90)
Oakton Electrascan ECF1-Pb (EC-1 series) product literature with
a price list effective 3/1/91
Claims 1-4 are rejected under the judicially created doctrine
of obviousness-type double patenting as being unpatentable over
claims 1-16 of U.S. Patent No. 5,173,264 to Zaromb in view of the
“MiniKap” brochure. According to the Examiner, “[t]he instant
claims differ from the patent [sic, the patent claims] in the rate
of sampling a throughput of at least 100 liters/minute [as recited
in appealed independent claim 1], an effective filtration area of
at least 500 square centimeters [as recited in dependent claim 2]
and a hold up volume of not more than 40 milliters [as recited in
appealed independent claim 1]” (supplemental Examiner’s answer,
mailed Oct. 11, 2000 as Paper No. 26, page 4). In the last full
paragraph on page 4 and the paragraph bridging pages 4 and 5 of the
supplemental Examiner’s answer (mailed October 11, 2000 as Paper
No. 26), the Examiner presents the following rationale in support
of his position that a person of ordinary skill in the art would
conclude that the invention defined by the rejected claims is an
obvious variation the invention defined in the patent claims:
The MiniKap 500 filtration module is well known in
the art for application to filtration of gases. The
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