Appeal No. 2004-1977 Page 6
Application No. 09/297,256
be the same size or may vary in size and capacity to meet various combinations of
requirements.
Lockwood discloses a fire extinguishing apparatus comprising a tube 4
containing fire extinguishing liquid, the tube designed to burst at a temperature
developed by a fire to thereby release the extinguishing liquid. Lockwood teaches
(column 1, lines 57-62) that for larger spaces, such as large engine compartments, the
tube itself may not contain sufficient extinguishing liquid and that, in such cases, the
tube may be connected at one end to a reservoir bottle.
The examiner somehow determines that Lockwood’s teaching of providing a tube
and, if needed for greater capacity, a reservoir bottle connected to the tube would have
suggested shaping the receptacles 16a-c of Diquattro into a tube shape of appropriate
length to meet various operating requirements (answer, pages 3-4). Even assuming
that one of ordinary skill in the art would have been led, by the combined teachings of
Diquattro and Lockwood, to shape Diquattro’s receptacles 16a-c as tubes of an
appropriate length to meet various operating requirements, it is not apparent to us how
that would result in a tube having a length of at least one hundred meters, as called for
in claim 1, at least two hundred meters, as called for in claim 13, or at least about 1 km,
as called for in claim 14.
For the foregoing reasons, we must reverse the rejection of independent claims
1, 13 and 14, as well as dependent claims 2-7 and 9-12, as being unpatentable over
Diquattro in view of Lockwood. As the examiner’s application of Willms provides no
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