Appeal No. 2004-2053
Application 09/773,704
teaching is that the battery has been necessarily or inherently
checked to determine whether it is capable of being charged. To
the extent that such a determination is not inherently made, we
determine that Bonnefoy would have at least suggested to one of
ordinary skill in the art to make such a determination before
charging the battery. To do otherwise is to impute stupidity on
the part of one of ordinary skill in the art. See In re Sovish,
769 F.2d 738, 743, 226 USPQ 771, 774 (Fed. Cir. 1985).
With respect to claim 6, the appellants do not dispute the
examiner’s finding at page 7 of the Answer that:
It is disclosed that the control means includes
means for measuring the voltage at the terminals of the
fuel cell, and wherein the control means respectively
increments and decrements the maximum intensity value
of the current following through the dc converter when
the voltage measured of the fuel cell is above and
below said predetermined range; wherein said
predetermined range corre- sponds to a voltage range at
which a power output of the fuel cell is maximum
(claims 3-4). It is also made known that, in practice,
the reference value of the voltage at the fuel cell is
deter- mined as being the point of the voltage/current
characteristic of the fuel cell corresponding to a
maximum power output in normal working conditions of
the fuel cell (col 1, lines 59-63).
Implicit in the above teaching is that the fuel flow responsible
for increasing or decreasing the voltage of a fuel cell stack is
7
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