Appeal No. 2003-1463 Page 7
Application No. 09/536,341
no explanation or technical reasoning to support the determination that Babka’s
atomizer is capable of such use.
For the foregoing reason, we cannot sustain the rejection of claim 5 as being
anticipated by Babka. It follows that we also cannot sustain the rejection of claims 6
and 7 depending from claim 5 as being anticipated by Babka.
The obviousness rejections
We turn next to the rejection of claims 1-3 as being unpatentable over Babka in
view of Schneider. Schneider, like Babka, is directed to a device for atomizing liquid
and, in any event, provides no cure for the deficiency of Babka discussed supra.
Moreover, we find no suggestion in the combined teachings of Babka and Schneider to
modify Babka to eliminate the goose neck extension 16 as proposed by the examiner.
Babka’s goose neck extension is intentionally provided to direct the oil radially outwardly
onto the inner surface of the ring 7 where it will have imparted to it a rotational velocity
and the examiner’s proposed modification would seemingly destroy this arrangement
and thus would not have been obvious.1 We therefore shall also not sustain this
rejection.
Turning finally to the rejection of claims 1-7 as being unpatentable over Chabert
in view of Ficker, there appears to be no dispute that Chabert discloses the subject
matter of independent claims 1 and 5 with the exception of the flow chicane in the flow
1 Where the proposed modification would render the prior art invention being modified
unsatisfactory for its intended purpose, the proposed modification would not have been obvious. See Tec
Air Inc. v. Denso Mfg. Michigan Inc., 192 F.3d 1353, 1360, 52 USPQ2d 1294, 1298 (Fed. Cir. 1999); In re
Gordon, 733 F.2d 900, 902, 221 USPQ 1125, 1127 (Fed. Cir. 1984).
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