Appeal No. 2000-1032
Application No. 08/795,878
The admitted state of the prior art in the
specification alone [sic] with the Jepson style claim
format taken with Miller et al. disclose molten metal
bath apparatus comprising a vessel having a molten bath
and having a top and bottom, a feed chamber and outlet
means and gas phases above the molten metal bath with a
baffle means defining separate gas phases, GB 2,189,504
and Obkircher further showing the use of baffles. It
would have been obvious to a routineer in the art to
provide the reactants via a top burner to the molten
metal bath as shown by the Okane et al. patents and
Pierre to be well known in the molten metal bath
gasification art, Reid showing a similar burner and
Espedal showing a prior art burner per se. It would have
been obvious to a routineer in the art to shape the
reactor as a “U-shaped” vessel, Pierre and Sullivan
showing such a shape for a vessel including molten metal
bath reactant chamber to be known per se. It would have
been obvious to a routineer in the art to use any
conventional material of construction including ceramic
material for the reactor vessel. The use of an
electrical induction coil which are well-known per se,
for preheating the vessel would have been obvious.
This rejection cannot be sustained.
In his brief, the appellant emphasizes the distinctions
of the here-claimed apparatus over the applied prior art.
Moreover, the appellant argues that the examiner has “failed
to provide a compelling incentive for one skilled in the art
to combine the [applied] references in order to arrive at the
present invention” (brief, page 10). This argument has merit
as reflected by the examiner’s above-quoted exposition in
support of his obviousness conclusion. Indeed, the merit of
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