Appeal No. 2006-0934
Application No. 10/327,852
This proposed reference combination is reasonable on its face and is not
disputed by the appellant. The appellant does contend, however, that the rejection of
claim 1 is unsound because the combined teachings of Cotter and Tran would not have
rendered obvious a heat exchange unit responsive to the claim limitation requiring the
end plate to be provided on each of opposite surfaces thereof with at least one recess
which is formed along the fitting hole with a predetermined depth for serving as a
welding groove.
The examiner deals with this limitation by finding that it is met by Cotter’s “recess
(34)” (answer, page 4)2 and/or by Tran’s “welding grooves (52)” (answer, page 7). As
indicated above, however, numeral 34 denotes the corrugated bearing surfaces on
Cotter’s sealing members 33 which have grooves 36 for receiving flanges on the
stacked array of heat exchange channel elements, and numeral 52 refers to the slots on
the end panels 46 and 48 of Tran’s headers for receiving flanges on the stacked array
of heat exchange cells. To the extent that the headers disclosed by Cotter and Tran
can be considered as embodying end plates, the aforementioned portions of these
headers would be viewed as defining fitting holes having a size and shape
complementary to the ends of the heat transfer elements (i.e., Cotter’s heat exchange
channel elements and Tran’s heat exchange cells) received therein. By no reasonable
2 Presumably, the examiner would also find the subject limitation to be met by the corresponding
structure on Cotter’s sealing member 58.
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