Appeal No. 2003-0217
Application No. 09/284,076
recited in the appealed claims. (Id. at page 6.) The appellant
further argues that there is no motivation or suggestion to
modify Javeri to control the operation of Javeri’s gas turbine
so as to supply exhaust gas to the reformer at an overpressure
of approximately 0.5 bar. (Appeal brief, page 9.)
As a preliminary matter, we note that the pressure units of
the appellant’s claimed invention and Muenger must be converted
to the same units. The appellant’s “overpressure of
approximately 0.5 bar” (claims 10 and 11) is expressed as gauge
pressure while Muenger’s “2 to 3.4 atm (30 to 50 psia)” (col. 3,
lines 28-29) indicates absolute pressure. Therefore, 1
atmosphere (or 1.013 bars) must be added to the appellant’s
recited pressure. It follows then that the appellant’s
converted pressure value would be 1.513 bars (or approximately
21.94 psia), as distinguished from Muenger’s 2 to 3.4 atm (30 to
50 psia; 2.026 to 3.444 bars).
Even if Javeri and Muenger can be combined as proposed by
the examiner, the examiner has offered no rationale on why one
of ordinary skill in the art would have been led to operate at a
pressure outside the pressure range disclosed in Muenger. In
this regard, Muenger’s disclosed pressures do not overlap with
the appellant’s claimed range. Furthermore, while the examiner
argues that “[i]t would have been obvious to one of ordinary
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