Appeal 2006-3265
Application 10/047,670
"teach away" from any combination thereof. See In re Beattie, 974 F.2d
1309, 1312-13, 24 USPQ2d 1040, 1042 (Fed. Cir. 1992). There is nothing
in Dalo, Ryan, or Ando that would have discouraged one of ordinary skill in
the art from utilizing a coupling of the type taught by Kocher or Turner,
neither of which involves brazing, in the heat exchanger to couple the heat
exchanger tubes to the tank structure. The couplings of Kocher and Turner
appear to be adapted to provide secure and fluid-tight connections and would
serve the same function in a heat exchanger environment. Appellants make
much of the fact that the Kocher and Turner couplings do not involve
brazing and are removable, while the couplings of Dalo, Ryan, and Ando are
brazed, and thus non-removable, but we note that Ryan, for example, brazes
the tubes 18 to the header plates 26, 28 (Ryan, col. 3, ll. 6-16; Fig. 2), but
does not braze the header plates 26, 28 to the tank 14. Rather, once the tubes
are seated against stop tabs 50, 52 of tank 14, the headers 26, 28 are fastened
in place by bending the extensions 60 of the tank 14, as illustrated in Fig. 2.
(Ryan, col. 4, ll. 34-39) Further, while the combination proposed by the
Examiner might change a heat exchanger structure from one wherein the
tubes are not removable from the tank structure to one wherein the tubes are
removable, there is no indication in the applied prior art that such a change
would be undesirable, unsuitable, or unpredictable, and Appellants have not
supplied any evidence that would so indicate.
For the above reasons, we conclude that Appellants have not
demonstrated that the Examiner erred in determining that it would have been
obvious to utilize either of the compression coupling techniques of Kocher
and Turner to couple oval or flattened heat exchanger tubes, of the type
discussed by Dalo, Ryan, or Ando, to heat exchanger structure and thus
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