Appeal No. 98-1032
Application 08/620,658
fanciful animal such as a pig in light of the teaching of
Mezey of making a lather dispenser and scrubbing implement in
the form of a fictional character or animal to make the
implement amusing and attractive to children.
In light of the foregoing, we will sustain the standing §
103 rejection of independent claims 1, 6 and 10 as being
unpatentable over the applied prior art. We will also 6
sustain the standing § 103 rejection of claims 3-5, 8, 9 and
11-14 and 16 since these claims have not been argued with any
reasonable degree of specificity apart from the independent
claims from which they depend. See, for example, In re King,
801 F.2d 1324, 1325, 231 USPQ 136, 137 (Fed. Cir. 1986).
Claims 21-23 depend from claims 1, 6 and 10,
respectively, and further call for the dispenser to consist of
only two parts, namely the reservoir portion and the water
absorbent body. However, neither dependent claims 21-23 nor
6In view of our findings with respect to the opening 7a
of Monnet’s Figures 3-4 device and the capability of said
device to function in the manner called for in the claims,
some of the references relied upon by the examiner in
rejecting the claims may be superfluous.
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