Appeal No. 2005-1115
Application 09/269,369
that the nozzles thereof are fixed as required by all of the
claims on appeal. While Kinsey may evince that fixed nozzles
were known in the prior art, this alone would not provide the
requisite suggestion, teaching and motivation for combining the
applied references in the manner proposed by the examiner. For
example, as previously indicated, the examiner contends that an
artisan would have provided Jackson’s nozzles in a fixed position
in view of Kinsey “since such would be cheaper to operate, while
still maintaining highly effective liquid agitation within the
tank” (Id.). From our perspective, however, the examiner is
merely speculating that a fixed nozzle arrangement would maintain
agitation at a level effective for Jackson’s purposes. There is
simply nothing in the applied references which supports such a
proposition. On the contrary, the Jackson disclosure militates
against such a proposition.
This is because an explicit object of Jackson’s
invention is to provide an agitator tank which “delivers high
velocity jets or streams of fluid in the mass to be mixed or
agitated and in such [a] manner as to effectively and uniformly
mix and agitate” (column 1, lines 19-22) and “which involves
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