Appeal No. 2006-0349 Page 5
Application No. 10/293,727
In light of the above, the rejection of claim 1, as well as claims 10-13, 21 and 22 standing
or falling therewith, is sustained. Inasmuch as the appellants have not separately argued the
patentability of claims 2, 4, 18 and 20 apart from claim 1, the rejection of these claims as being
unpatentable over Amir in view of Hanna and Hay is also sustained (see In re Young, 927 F.2d
588, 590, 18 USPQ2d 1089, 1091 (Fed. Cir. 1991); In re Wood, 582 F.2d 638, 642, 199 USPQ
137, 140 (CCPA 1978)).
With regard to the rejection of claims 3, 19 and 24-26 as being unpatentable over Amir in
view of Hanna and Brasz, the appellants’ only argument is that, “although the Hay reference
does disclose a rankine cycle being heated by the waste heat from an internal combustion engine
12 it does not show or suggest the extraction of heat from the exhaust of an internal combustion
[engine] as recited in claims 3, 19 and 24-26” (brief, p. 5). This argument is not well taken in
light of Hay’s express discussion (col. 1, ll. 27-31) in the background section of the patent of
waste heat recovery systems in which “hot engine coolant and hot engine exhaust gas are
circulated through heat exchangers to vaporize a working fluid before the same enters a vapor
engine for providing extra power to the main internal combustion engine.” In view of this well-
known practice of recovering heat from the hot engine coolant and exhaust gas of internal
combustion engines, it would have been obvious to utilize the organic Rankine cycle of Amir to
recover heat from either the hot engine coolant or exhaust from an internal combustion engine.
The rejection is sustained.
The rejection of claims 5, 14 and 23 as being unpatentable over Amir in view of Hanna
and Brasz, however, is not sustained. The teaching by Brasz of a diffuser 13 at the inlet of a
compressor would have provided absolutely no suggestion to use such a diffuser structure as a
nozzle at the inlet of the Amir turbine.
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