Appeal 2006-1068
Reissue Application 08/425,766
Further, Kent does not teach or suggest that his cooling tower can be used to
remove the chemical compounds described in Applicants’ claim. Clearly,
Kent does not teach or suggest any feature of Applicants’ invention as
described in Claims 1 - 14 and 22 - 25.
Applicants have shown that each of the references relied on omit
critical features of Applicants’ invention. Moreover, no reference teaches or
suggests the use of first and second combustion chambers where the first
combustion chamber incinerates waste material “in an oxygen rich
atmosphere” and the second combustion chamber incinerates the fired
exhaust in an “oxygen starved atmosphere.” In addition, no reference
teaches or suggests a liquid filter that both captures particulate matter and
treats the exhaust “to reduce the quantity of CO, NO and SO.” Applicants
therefore respectfully submit that the obviousness rejection has been
traversed. [Id., pages 4-5.]
4. The Examiner found these arguments unpersuasive and finally rejected
the elected claims including claim 1 of the ‘419 application. In their November 12,
1991 response to this final rejection, the Appellants made the following arguments:
Applicant[s] further submit[] that the liquid filter of Claim 1 and the
liquid filter means of Claim 22 require “recapturing said particulate matter
contained in said fired exhaust and for chemically treating said fired exhaust
gasses to reduce the quantity of CO, NO, and SO contained in said fired
exhaust.” This limitation is not taught or suggested in any of the references.
While Hadley ‘652 does show the use of liquid sprays to neutralize the
exhaust, his device does not serve the added function of capturing “said
particulate matter”. The nature of the exhaust in Applicants’ invention has
been more particularly described by the Amendment requiring that the
exhaust contains both “gasses and particulate matter”. Nothing in the prior
art teaches or suggests Applicants’ claimed liquid filter and liquid filter
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