Appeal 2007-0655
Application 10/314,157
201 to a reservoir of diluted fuel, line 205. As pointed out by the Examiner,
Acker expressly discloses that “[p]ump 202 may be designed so as to control
the proportions of flow of each of the water, neat methanol, and fuel solution
input streams” (Acker col. 4, ll. 8-11). In our view, controller 301 controls
and delivers concentrated fuel and water to a reservoir not depicted in the
drawings, and pump 202 connects and delivers concentrated fuel and water
to reservoir 205. We find no error in the Examiner’s reasoning that “ [a]
reservoir is any device that has the capacity to store a volume of something
no matter what said capacity is, so a pipe is perfectly capable of being a
reservoir and so are mixers, vaporizers, evaporators and even pumps”
(Answer 5, ¶ 2).
Appellants maintain that element 301 of Acker “has absolutely no
connection with or ability to control a water source” (Br. 17, ¶ 2).
However, as explained above, the fuel delivery assembly 201 of Acker
preferably is a source of highly concentrated fuel which, necessarily,
contains some water and, also, the less preferred, less concentrated fuel
would also contain water. Contrary to Appellants’ implicit argument that
the reference discloses no source of water being controlled, the rejected
claims do not define a source of only water.
We also do not subscribe to Appellant’s argument that Acker “is
completely silent with respect to determining, measuring, or monitoring a
concentration of diluted fuel.” (Br. 18, first full sentence). Appellants
acknowledge that element 301 of Acker controls the flow of fuel in response
to a temperature sensor, and we agree with the Examiner that sensing the
temperature indirectly controls the fuel concentration. As explained by the
Examiner, “[a]n indirect way of determining concentration is by using the
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