Appeal No. 1999-1113
Application No. 08/888,354
elevator” is an integral part of the claimed structure since the chamber must be mounted to
the elevator, the clean grain must enter the chamber from the clean grain elevator and must
exit the chamber back into the clean grain elevator. Accordingly, in order to find the
claimed subject matter obvious, within the meaning of 35 U.S.C. § 103, the examiner
would need to provide some evidentiary showing as to why it would have been obvious to
modify the Oetiker teaching of a capacitive moisture sensor so as to connect such a
sensor to a clean grain elevator in a combine in the manner claimed. The examiner has
made no such showing. Thus, we will not sustain the rejection.
While we need not reach the merits of the rejection of claims 4 and 5 since we find
claim 1 to be unobvious based on the evidence provided by the examiner, we would also
note that while appellants argue the merits of claim 4, pointing out that the specific
structure of a paddle wheel is recited as being the claimed “flow control means,” the
examiner is totally silent as to this specific limitation.
We now turn to the rejection of claim 7 under 35 U.S.C. § 112, first paragraph.
We also will not sustain this rejection.
At the outset, we note that the examiner has failed to provide a reasonable basis for
contesting the adequacy of the written description of the instant specification. The
examiner’s rejection of claim 7, in toto, states that “[c]laim 7 has no support in the
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