Appeal No. 1999-1899 Page 9
Application No. 08/932,090
that the limitations of claim 1 are not taught by the applied
prior art. Heyl teaches all of the limitations of appellant's
claim 1 and, with regard to the claimed primary and secondary
inlets, it is our determination that one of ordinary skill in
the art would understand that Heyl's grate (124) (Fig. 8 and
column 7, line 45) consists of a plurality of openings/inlets
wherein the openings/inlets located in the center area of the
grate can be considered to be a primary inlet in that they
would likely pass more particulate material than the
openings/inlets at the periphery of the grate, which
peripheral openings/inlets can be considered to constitute a
secondary inlet. As to the appellant's argument that the
combination (of Heyl and Ruemelin) does not meet the claim
language that "... ambient air will be caused to flow from
outside the housing directly into said primary and secondary
inlets..." (brief, page 13), we note that the arrow (210), in
Figure 9 of Heyl, illustrates the path of ambient air from
outside the apparatus through the plurality of openings in the
grate (124) (i.e., the primary and secondary inlets) into the
housing, thus this claimed limitation is satisfied by Heyl.
Page: Previous 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007