Appeal 2006-1768
Application 10/389,327
Appellants provide no indication of why the results are different than what
would be expected. Rather, as the Examiner explained in his Answer,
Appellants’ allegedly unexpected result appears to be nothing more than the
application of basic fluid dynamic principles.
Furthermore the allegation of unexpected results is not commensurate
with the scope of the claims. The claims require a minimum burner port
area (i.e., at least 1.0 in2 per (MM) Btu/hr), whereas the quoted sentence
does not include such a minimum area. Accordingly, we are not convinced
that Appellants’ “unexpected results” overcome the prima facie case of
obviousness set forth by the Examiner.
We affirm the § 103(a) rejection over Fischer.
§ 103(a) REJECTION OVER DINICOLANTONIO
The Examiner also rejected claim 1 over Dinicolantonio. The
Examiner stated that Dinicolantonio teaches all aspects of claim 1, except
for the “claimed total area of the main ports” (Answer 5). Citing to In re
Aller, 220 F.2d 454, 456, 105 USPQ 233, 235 (CCPA 1955), the Examiner
concluded that it would have been obvious to combine the claimed total area
of the main ports with Dinicolantonio “since it has been held that where the
general conditions of a claim are disclosed in the prior art, discovering the
optimum or workable ranges involves only routine skill in the art” (Answer
5-6).
The Appellants make the same arguments with regard to the rejection
over Dinicolantonio that they made with regard to the rejection over Fischer.
Since we have determined that burner port size is a result-effective variable
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