Appeal 2006-3201
Application 10/689,951
The examiner, therefore, has not established a prima facie
case of obviousness of the inventions claimed in the
appellants’ claims 2 and 12.
Claims 3 and 4
Maric discloses a cryogenic apparatus including a heat
exchanger coil (22) that passes into, through, and out of a
vessel (12). The heat exchanger coil includes, outside the
point where it exits the vessel, a temperature sensor (70)
inserted into a hole that intersects the coil’s flow passage of
heat exchange medium (figure 1). The temperature sensor
measures the temperature of condensate produced in the heat
exchanger coil from vapor that has been condensed by heat
exchange with the cryogenic fluid (col. 5, lines 66-68; col. 6,
lines 20-28 and 41-42).
The examiner argues that it would have been obvious to one
of ordinary skill in the art to use Maric’s hole intersecting a
fluid passage in Sillat’s sensor to act as an active component
for determining fluid temperature (answer, page 4). Maric’s
hole intersecting a fluid passage is not in a cryogenic fluid
line but, rather, is in a heat exchanger coil condensate line
(col. 6, lines 41-42). The examiner has not explained how
Maric’s disclosure would have led one of ordinary skill in the
art to use Maric’s hole intersecting a fluid passage in
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