Appeal No. 97-0064
Application No. 08/286,785
We have carefully considered the claims, the applied prior
art references, and the respective positions articulated by the
appellants and the examiner. As a consequence of our review, we
will reverse the obviousness rejection of claims 1 through 16.
The examiner combines Wittwer and Shamir to reject all of
the claims. Wittwer discloses (column 9, lines 19-20)
"imprinting of logos, codes or the like may be placed on the
visible surface of the label." The examiner focuses on those two
lines (Final Rejection, page 5) as "the incentive for labelling
capsules using small labels." Shamir teaches (column 4, lines
42-44) that "microlabels may be utilized in any application in
which product identification requires exceedingly small labels."
The examiner concludes (Final Rejection, page 5) that since
Wittwer teaches using small labels, and Shamir teaches using
microlabels for small labels, "it would have been an obvious
expedient for one with ordinary skill in the art to attach the
micro-labels as taught by Shamir [or Aurenius] to the capsules."
There are two problems with the examiner's conclusion.
First, the end of the paragraph in Wittwer states (column 9,
lines 31-39):
The application of indicia by imprinting provides a
further visual characteristic that enhances the tamper-
evident capabilities of the seal. As difficult as it
is to cosmetically reconstruct a fractured seal, so
much more so is the reconstruction of a fractured logo
to assure alignment, continuity, etc. Imprinting,
4
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007