Appeal No. 96-2623
Application No. 08/240,095
In this case the appellants have submitted rebuttal evidence
in the form of a declaration of Roger Bialic (Paper No. 17, filed
August 1, 1994). The Bialic declaration attests that (1) he is
Vice-President/Finance of Stahl's Inc. (the assignee of the
present application), (2) he is familiar with and has reviewed
the claims of this application, (3) Stahl's Inc. is the world's
largest manufacturer of heat applied lettering and since about
1983, a leader in supplying apparatus for heat applied lettering,
(4) about 1989, the appellants began to develop heat applied
transfer presses because the heat applied lettering presses
available at the time did not meet Stahl's needs, (5) Stahl's
request to other manufacturers to improve their heat applied
transfer presses were ignored, and (6) the combination of
features claimed in claims 1-12 of this application has led to
considerable commercial success as sales have averaged about
$400,000 annually.
After carefully evaluating the objective evidence of
nonobviousness supplied by the appellants in the Bialic
declaration, we have considered anew the issue of obviousness
under 35 U.S.C. § 103. However, after considering all the
evidence and argument of record, it is our opinion that the
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