Appeal No. 2001-0379
Application No. 09/141,891 Page 10
10/C, as recited in claim 1. Moreover, we find the examiner's
reliance on In re Aller, 220 F.2d 454, 105 USPQ 233 (CCPA 1955)
to be misplaced, as the general conditions of the claim are not
disclosed in the prior art.
From all of the above, we find that the examiner has failed
to establish a prima facie case of obviousness of claim 1.
Accordingly, the rejection of claim 1 and claims 2-7, and 9,
dependent therefrom, is reversed.
We turn next to independent claim 11. We observe at the
outset that the limitations which distinguished claim 1 from Kern
and Cox, i.e., (a) an air pump having an inlet connected to the
outlet of the chamber; (b) the air pump enabling a gas mixture to
flow therethrough at a speed of not less than 5 meter/second, and
(c) a temperature sensor that senses a temperature rise of at
least 10/C, do not appear in claim 11. We find that Cox
discloses a method for detecting flammable gas in a gas mixture
(col. 1, lines 7-12); providing a reactor chamber (48 and col. 4,
line 42) having an inlet (80), an outlet (84) and a cavity
(figure 1) contained therein; providing an ignitor means (86) and
a temperature sensor (90) in the cavity; flowing a gas mixture
through said inlet of said reactor chamber into said cavity (col.
7, lines 41-47); igniting said gas mixture by said ignitor means
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