Appeal No. 2002-1853 Page 7
Application No. 09/340,339
as to type of combustion chamber. Moreover, there is no evidence to support a
conclusion that one of ordinary skill in the art would have considered the Fujieda
teaching to be applicable only to engines having pre-combustion chambers. In this
regard and in the absence of evidence to the contrary, it seems to us that Fujieda’s
teaching that wetting the spark plug with fuel from the injector causes incomplete
combustion would be applicable to virtually any type of spark-fired internal combustion
engine.
Since the appellants have chosen to group claims 3, 4, 7-10, 13, 14 and 17-21
with claim 1 (Brief, page 3), the rejection of these claims also is sustained.
Dependent claim 5 recites the limitation that the fuel injector and the spark plug
are disposed at acute angles to the cylinder bore axis. Such an arrangement is
disclosed by Tsuchida ‘638 in Figure 8, and therefore we will sustain the rejection of this
claim as being unpatentable over Tsuchida ‘638 and Fujieda. We reach the same
result with regard to claim 15, which also contains that limitation.
Dependent claim 6 adds to claim 5 the requirement that the acute angle of the
fuel injector to the cylinder bore axis be greater than that of the spark plug. This feature
also is disclosed in Tsuchida ‘638, the primary reference, in Figure 4, and thus the
rejection of this claim is sustained. The same limitation appears in claim 16, and we
also will sustain that rejection.
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