Appeal No. 95-4546
Application No. 08/071,008
and novelty of my invention.” Turning first to the purported
commercial success, appellant has not proven any nexus between
the statements made by his competitor in the Exhibit E catalog
and the claimed invention in claim 8. For this reason, appellant
cannot use such statements to prove commercial success of his
claimed invention. To prove long-felt need in the market,
appellant has to submit evidence that his claimed invention
filled a void in the marketplace that was not met by others in
the industry. See In re Allen, 324 F.2d 993, 996-97, 139 USPQ
492, 495 (CCPA 1963). Appellant’s opinions in the declarations
which have little relevance to the claimed invention cannot take
the place of such evidence. In view of the lack of convincing
evidence of non-obviousness, we agree with the examiner that the
pictorial image stored by the computer in Morofuji “would have
been any design desired to be photocopied by the user” onto the
surface of the cans, and that a clock face can be copied onto the
surface of a can in Morofuji. The obviousness rejection of claim
8 is sustained.
The obviousness rejection of claim 10 is sustained because
Morofuji uses a laser 15 to automatically cut a shape from the
sheet of material 30 (column 13, lines 10 through 13). The
obviousness rejection of claim 11 is sustained because it would
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