Appeal No. 2004-0672
Application No. 09/894,704
and/or counter clockwise directions, they are moved towards
and/or away from one another in accordance with appealed
independent claim 40.
In light of the foregoing, we hereby sustain the examiner’s
section 102 rejection of claims 40, 41, 50 and 52-55 as being
anticipated by Yoshida.
As for the section 103 rejection of independent claim 56,
the only controversy before us relates to the here claimed
feature of “a plurality of first spray nozzles for receiving
water from said water source and spraying a substantially flat
spray of water in a substantially vertical plane.” On page 5 of
the brief, the appellants argue that “it is not understood how
the Official Action is able to conclude that the prior art
nozzles produce a flat spray of water in a substantially vertical
plane.” This argument is unconvincing for a number of reasons.
First, as pointed out by the examiner on page 6 of the
answer (and not disputed by the appellants), the appellants
themselves “disclose in the first full paragraph on page 40 of
the instant specification, ‘the second wide-angle spray nozzle 9
is a nozzle realized by applying the principle of nozzle
indicated in the Japanese Laid-Open Patent No. 10-28656'.” As
previously explained, this second spray nozzle is described on
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