Appeal No. 2005-0880 8
Application No. 09/963,815
vapor venting problem in the admitted prior art and the teaching
by Allison of a solution thereto would have provided the artisan
with ample suggestion or motivation to incorporate a cap-less
restrictor assembly of the sort disclosed by Allison into the
admitted prior art system. This modification would involve the
addition to the admitted prior art system of a mechanical seal,
such as Allison’s wall member 210 and elastomeric annular nozzle
seal 212, between the nozzle and filler neck upstream of the
vapor recirculation line, thereby arriving at the method recited
in claim 1. That the proposed modification of the admitted prior
art system in view of Allison also would have included the
addition of a vacuum relief valve which permits entrainment of
air into the filler tube during refueling is of no moment as
neither claim 1 nor any other appealed claim excludes such a
relief valve or the entrainment of air permitted thereby.
Hence, on the record before us, the combined teachings of
the admitted prior art and Allison justify the examiner’s
conclusion that the differences between the subject matter
recited in claim 1 and the prior art are such that the subject
matter as a whole would have been obvious at the time the
invention was made to a person having ordinary skill in the art.
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