Appeal No. 2004-0534 Page 4
Application No. 10/010,337
In attempting to read claims 11 and 17, and the claims depending therefrom, on
the structure of Gardenier, the examiner considers the interior channel to be the area
enclosed by air jacket 18, the first inlet to be water inlet 20, the second inlet to be
mixing chamber 30,3 the slotted nozzle to be port 16 and the dam to be the horizontal
top portion of the structure enclosing the water chamber 22. While the water inlet 20
seems reasonably to respond to the first inlet of claims 11 and 17, we agree with
appellant that neither the port 16' nor the mixing chamber 30 can be considered to be a
second inlet for flow of air from a second fluid supply conduit. Specifically, if the interior
channel is considered to be met by the channel formed between the air jacket 18 and
the water chamber 22, port 16' may reasonably be considered to be an inlet thereto.
That being the case, however, the water inlet 20, which feeds to the port 16', cannot
then reasonably be considered to be a first inlet to the interior channel for flow of water
from the first fluid supply conduit. If, on the other hand, the interior channel is
considered to be met by the combination of the air chamber 22 and the flow passage
between the air chamber 22 and the air jacket 18, the water inlet 20 responds to the
first inlet recited in claims 11 and 17, but the port 16' and mixing chamber 30 can best
be considered to be a passage between one portion of the channel and a second
portion of the channel, not an inlet to the channel.
3 We, like appellant, assume that the examiner actually intended to refer to the port 16' as the
second inlet.
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