Appeal No. 97-2116
Application 07/789,802
This is a decision on an appeal from the examiner’s final
rejection of claims 1, 3, 5-10, 12-14 and 16-25, all the
claims pending in the application. We affirm-in-part.
By way of background, this is the third appeal of the
subject matter disclosed in this application. In the parent
of the present application, this merits panel, in a decision
rendered March 18, 1991, affirmed-in-part the examiner’s final
rejection of the claims appealed therein. Appellant then
filed the present continuation application for the purpose of
further prosecution before the examiner. There followed a
second appeal. In a decision rendered September 16, 1993,
this merits panel reversed the examiner’s rejection of all the
appealed claims. The examiner, with the group director’s
approval, then reopened prosecution and entered a number of
new rejections against the claims then pending, which
ultimately resulted in this third appeal.
Appellant’s invention pertains to a thin walled metal
container (claims 1, 3, 5-9 and 25) and to a method of making
a container (claims 10, 12-14 and 16-24), and in particular to
the provision of a thermoplastic sleeve of heat shrinkable
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