Appeal No. 2001-1466
Application 09/055,899
Claim 9 depends indirectly from claim 1 and further
defines the applicator recited therein as including a wick
soaking in the product. The rejection at hand rests on the
examiner’s determination that the appellant’s specification is
non-enabling with respect to a liquid product packaging and
applying unit having both the wick recited in claim 9 and the
compressible reservoir of the elected species, which features
the examiner considers to be incompatible. But even if it is
assumed for the sake of argument that the wick and
compressible reservoir, as disclosed, are incompatible, and
notwithstanding the appellant’s election of the Figure 3
species, the fact remains that claim 9 does not expressly
recite, or otherwise require the claimed unit to include, the
compressible reservoir. Thus, the examiner’s position that
the claim is directed to a combination of features not enabled
by the appellant’s disclosure is unsound.2
2A review of the instant application reveals a bit of
ambiguity as to the relationship between the wick and the
applicator. For example, pages 4 and 7 in the specification
indicate that the wick is a separate element which is
connected to the first (inner) end of the applicator; claim 9,
on the other hand, recites that the applicator includes the
wick. In the same vein, the recitation in claim 9 that the
applicator includes a wick soaking in the product seemingly
conflicts with the recitation in parent claim 6 that the first
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