Appeal No. 2006-0962 6
Application No. 10/117,981
The examiner looks to the applied Hartman and Arbeus
references and urges that Hartman discloses a centrifugal pump
substantially as claimed, but does not disclose a plurality of
impeller vanes or a shallow recess as defined in independent
claim 15 which has an abrupt edge that is undercut at a large
acute angle. To account for the above-noted deficiencies of
Hartman the examiner looks to Arbeus,
urging that it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill
in the art to form the impeller of Hartman such that it includes
plural vanes as taught in Arbeus and to form the recess (50) of
the pump in Hartman so that it includes an abrupt edge formed as
an undercut at a large acute angle, with the large acute angle
being more than 45 degrees, with a trailing edge of the recess
gently tapered into the intake at a very small acute angle of 3
to 10 degrees, and with the base forming a flat ramp, as taught
by Arbeus, for the purpose of feeding pollutants towards the
outlet of the pump.
Appellants’ contend that the examiner has not provided an
adequate suggestion or motivation to combine the two applied
references and has improperly used hindsight in an attempt to
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