Appeal No. 2001-1628 Page 4
Application No. 09/054,794
34, the exits of the air purge passage 36 and the fuel passage 38 being coaxial
as in the claimed invention, the fuel exiting the conical divergent tip of the fuel
injector being prevented from contacting the venturi walls 26 of the air injector by
the purging air 36; the venturi wall 26 being protected from contact with the fuel
by the inherent air boundary layer formed along said wall. It would have been
obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to modify the Koshoffer injector with the
coaxial purging-air passage of Shekleton in order to prevent the fuel from
contacting the wall of the venturi, and therefore prevent the fuel coking from
occurring. The combination would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in
the art, in particular because the proper design of the Shekleton injector, i.e.,
surrounding the fuel jet in a shroud of air, preventing the fuel from hitting the hot
venturi wall and consequently removing the necessary source of coking material
from the hot wall, did not suffer from the coking deficiency of Koshoffer.
Therefore, one of ordinary skill in the art would look at the coking-free design of
Shekleton, in order to cure the coking deficiency of Koshoffer.
OPINION
In reaching our decision in this appeal, we have given careful consideration to
the appellant's specification and claims, to the applied prior art references, to the
respective arguments articulated by the appellant in the brief (Paper No. 15, filed
October 6, 2000) and reply brief (Paper No. 17, filed December 26, 2000) and to the
examiner's response to argument set forth in the answer. Upon evaluation of all the
evidence before us, it is our conclusion that the evidence adduced by the examiner is
insufficient to establish a prima facie case of obviousness with respect to the claims
under appeal. Accordingly, we will not sustain the examiner's rejection of claims 1 to 7
under 35 U.S.C. § 103. Our reasoning for this determination follows.
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