Appeal No. 96-1604
Application 08/272,906
sidewalls engaging with the grooves of the H-shaped connectors in
an interference fit as required by appealed independent claims 6
and 22. Therefore, we also cannot sustain the examiner's
rejection of claims 6 through 9 and 22 under 35 U.S.C. § 103
for this additional reason.
Furthermore, like the appellant, we are unable to find any
teaching suggestion or motivation for modifying the end closures
of Sproull to include skirt portions 18 as taught for the end
closures of the ice cream container of Sherk. We observe that
the end closures 16' of Sproull (Figure 8) already include
downwardly (or upwardly) extending skirt portions 66, and it is
not seen why one of ordinary skill in the art would have been
led to the teachings of Sherk to have the portions 66 extend even
farther downwardly past the plate portion 60, other than by
utilizing appellant's claim as a template and the application
of impermissible hindsight. Thus, we consider the examiner's
rejection of claims 6 through 9 and 22 under 35 U.S.C. § 103
to be defective for this further reason.
We have also considered the teachings of the patents to
DeForest and Linnemann as applied in the rejections of claims 13,
14 and 23 under 35 U.S.C. § 103, but we find nothing therein to
cure the deficiencies of the rejection based on the combined
11
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007