Appeal No. 2003-0455
Application No. 09/438,969
“newly manufactured” singlet. The examiner’s attempt to bridge the
evidentiary gap between AAPA and the claimed invention under the
cover of what “any one would know” and/or “common sense” is
unavailing in this particular situation as it rests on undue
speculation and unfounded assumptions as to how the artisan might
have gone about repairing a damaged turbine nozzle segment. In
this regard, it seems just as likely to us that the ordinarily
skilled artisan would have considered the marriage of a “newly
manufactured” singlet and a salvaged singlet to be an undesirable
and costly alternative for refurbishing a nozzle segment as
compared to the method of AAPA because the service life of a
refurbished nozzle segment utilizing new and salvaged singlets
would appear to be a function of the life of the salvaged singlet
rather than the new singlet. Moreover, a review of the Lee patent
referenced in the second paragraph on page 2 of appellants’
specification reveals no hint whatsoever of using anything other
than salvaged vane clusters for remanufacturing turbine vane
clusters. See, for example, column 1, lines 10-12 (“This invention
relates to . . . methods for remanufacturing turbine vane clusters
from salvageable vane components”); column 1, lines 46-50 (“To
reduce replacement costs of vanes, designers and manufacturers of
gas turbine engines have sought techniques for salvaging reusable
5
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007