Appeal No. 1997-3524 Page 7
Application No. 08/336,402
the relevant art that the inventor(s), at the time the
application was filed, had possession of the claimed invention
(answer, page 4). Appellants, on the other hand urge that the
drawing figures 4-7 and the corresponding discussion of those
figures in the specification, as originally filed, show that an
ambient atmosphere surround the vessel and disk in drawing figure
4 and the sol and disk in drawing figure 5 (brief, pages 12 and
13 and reply brief, pages 8 and 9) and hence supports the "under
ambient pressure" limitation of claim 25.
We find ourselves in agreement with the examiner's
conclusion with respect to this matter. While drawing figures
submitted with the original application are part of the original
disclosure as urged by appellants, we are of the view that one of
ordinary skill in the art would not have determined that the
inventor had possession of an ambient pressure limitation as to
the porous body and treating liquid contacting step from the
original application disclosure including the depictions in the
drawing figures. In this regard, we note that even if we could
agree with appellants that an ambient atmosphere surrounds the
vessel and disk depicted in appellants’ drawing figure 4 and the
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007