Appeal No. 2005-1318 Page 4
Application No. 10/191,198
Teachings of the applied prior art
Schneider
Schneider's invention relates generally to packages and/or containers for
fluent materials such as liquids, powders, and the like; and it is more
especially concerned with a novel construction for packages and/or containers
having flexible walls. Schneider teaches (column 1, lines 14-70) that:
One general type of article of this kind is the rigid package or container
such as the familiar glass bottle or the cardboard carton. Containers of this type
have many advantages since the walls are sufficiently rigid to retain a given
shape and various advantages result from this physical characteristic of the
container. Thus, containers having rigid walls stand upright on a base,
independently of the amount of the contents, and there is no leakage or
accidental discharge of the contents after the package is opened. Another
advantage of this type of container is that there is a relatively large volume-to-
surface ratio which has the practical advantage that a minimum amount of
material is required to package a given volume of product.
There are other advantages to containers of a rigid nature. For example,
the rigid walled containers do not crush or deform easily, they stand upright on
the retailer's shelf for display purposes, and they provide a suitable structure
upon which to apply advertising and the like.
Another very popular and well known type of package or container is that
in which the walls are entirely made of flexible material, such as the familiar flat
or envelope type of packages. These packages are generally made from thin
film having heat-sealing characteristics. From a practical standpoint, the flexible
wall packages have their advantages too. Most importantly among these
advantages is the relatively low cost of packages of this character since they are
made entirely from very thin, flexible film which is relatively inexpensive and they
can be produced rapidly on form-and-fill machinery which operates at
comparatively high speeds. Packages of this type lend themselves readily to the
use of a wide range of materials, such as transparent plastic films, metal foils,
and various types of laminates which may include an exterior layer of foil. The
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