Appeal No. 2001-0673
Application No. 09/138,445
airless variety. Hence, the examiner’s evidence of obviousness
does not provide a factual basis for concluding that it would
have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art to
provide an airless sprayer tip assembly in the Bollag reference.
Second, the examiner’s opinion to the effect that
“spraying” and “atomizing” are synonymous terms is not well
taken. In this regard, we think appellant’s position that
“atomizing” is a subset of “spraying” is the better view. Thus,
we are in accord with appellant that “spraying” is not
necessarily “atomizing.” There is therefore no factual basis to
support the examiner’s conclusion to the effect that the applied
prior art teaches a tip assembly that “atomizes” a liquid.
Finally, the prior art applied by the examiner is devoid of
any teaching or suggestion of appellant’s inventive concept of
injecting particles into the atomized stream at the particular
location called for in the claims, namely, “approximately into
[the] locus of atomization” of the paint. The circumstance that
it is known in the art that a locus of atomization exists in
airless atomization spraying devices does not suffice in this
regard. In addition, and in contrast to the position apparently
held by the examiner, there is no basis for concluding that
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