Appeal No. 2000-2045 Page 11
Application No. 09/206,253
The rejection of claim 24 is not sustained on the basis of the reasons set forth
above with regard to claim 19, for further consideration of the “related prior art” does not
alter that conclusion.
The rejection of claim 26 is sustained for the same reasons as claim 18.1
The Rejection of Claims 35 and 36
These claims stand rejected on the basis of Bates, Cornish, and Marino.
Since there is no dispute that Bates discloses a medical container (Brief, page 4),
we will sustain the rejection of claim 35, which adds to claim 15 the requirement that the
container have a medical specimen or pharmaceutical substance therein, which one of
ordinary skill in the art would have recognized as being among the conventional contents of
such a container. Marino is merely confirmatory of the fact that it was known at the time of
the appellants’ invention to utilize containers such as that of Bates to contain medical
substances.
The rejection of claim 36, which depends from claim 30, will not be sustained, for
Marino, which was added to the rejection of this claim, fails to overcome the shortcoming
in the combination of Bates and Cornish explained above with regard to claim 30.
SUMMARY
1The subject matter of claims 23 and 26 is identical, and claim 26 depends from
claim 23, which means they are duplicate claims. This situation should be remedied.
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