Appeal No. 2005-1107
Application No. 10/621,201
by a fuel needle to make the fuel connection" (page 10 of Brief,
first paragraph). However, the presence of an opening for a
delivery does not disqualify the reference fuel tank as a
reservoir. Clearly, a reservoir must have an avenue for
delivering the stored liquid. Furthermore, appellants' claims
expressly recite that the reservoir is connected to the fuel
cell, and it would seem that such a connection is necessary to
make use of the fuel in appellants' reservoir.
As recognized by the examiner, Hockaday does not disclose
the use of the claimed immersion capacitive unit for measuring
the amount of fuel in the reservoir. However, Pope evidences
that it was known in the art to employ the claimed immersion
capacitive unit for measuring the amount of fuel in a tank.
Accordingly, we fully concur with the examiner that "it would
have been obvious [for] one of ordinary skill in the art at the
time the invention was made to modify Hockaday by substituting
the manual sight glass type liquid level sensor with the
immersion type capacitive liquid level sensor taught by Pope" in
order to utilize a more accurate means (page 4 of Answer,
penultimate sentence). Indeed, it would seem that appellants'
specification acknowledges that it was known in the art to use
such immersion capacitive units for determining the level of a
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