Appeal 2007-1444
Application 10/732,497
“To establish inherency, the extrinsic evidence must make clear that the
missing descriptive matter is necessarily present in the thing described in the
reference, and that it would be so recognized by persons of ordinary skill.
Inherency, however, may not be established by probabilities or possibilities. The
mere fact that a certain thing may result from a given set of circumstances is not
sufficient.” In re Robertson, 169 F.3d 743, 745, 49 USPQ2d 1949, 1950-51 (Fed.
Cir. 1999) (citations omitted) (internal quotation marks omitted).
ANALYSIS
Based on the above findings of fact, Scoccia discloses the first three
limitations of claim 20. The correctness of the rejection of claim 20 therefore turns
on whether Scoccia teaches “determining an amount of refrigerant charge loss
from the system based upon the difference between the expected pressure and the
determined equilibrium pressure.” The Examiner asserts that “the amount of
refrigerant loss detected is the amount that will require a warning of low refrigerant
whether it is expressed as a percentage of total or just an amount that requires
system serving.” (Answer 3). The Examiner inappropriately relies on Appellants’
disclosure for support of the assertion that there is a one-to-one relationship
between the determined pressure and amount of refrigerant loss in the system for a
given ambient temperature (Answer 3-4) (referring to Figure 2 of Appellants’
disclosure and accompanying text). Examiner argues that based on the one-to-one
relationship, “it is inherent to the determination of the amount of refrigerant loss
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