Appeal No. 2002-2329 Page 6
Application No. 09/647,815
persuaded otherwise by the examiner’s opinion on page 13 and 14 of the Answer,
which is unsupported by evidence, that the SOx and NOx absorbents should be
considered to be functional equivalents, and thereby it would have been obvious to one
of ordinary skill in the art to install a feature that works to remove SOx from the
Takeshima SOx absorber in the Cullen system to remove SOx from a NOx absorber.
It is our opinion that Cullen and Takeshima fail to establish a prima facie case of
obviousness with regard to the subject matter recited in claim 1, and we will not sustain
the rejection of claim 1 or of claims 2 and 10, which depend therefrom.
We reach the same conclusion, for the same reasons, with respect to
independent apparatus claim 14, which provides control means that operate the engine
with the same relationship between 81 and 82 during the second time interval.
Claims 3, 4 and 6, which depend from claim 1, stand rejected on the basis of
Cullen and Takeshima, taken further with Sultan, applied for its teachings regarding
temperature sensors. However, Sultan fails to alleviate the deficiency present in
combining the teachings of the other two references, and we will not sustain this
rejection.
Claim 5 depends from claim 1 through claims 3 or 4, and specifies 600°C as the
minimum desulfurization temperature and 100°C as the minimum value added thereto.
This claim has been rejected on the basis of the two references combined against claim
1, further considering that the selection of these temperatures would have been matters
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