Appeal No. 98-2655
Application 08/698,743
the gasket to the cap and thereby prevent the gasket from
falling off the cap and allowing undesired leakage, as is
urged by the examiner in the answer, such a combination of the
applied references would not result in the device as set forth
in appellant’s independent claim 1 on appeal, since the
combination would still lack a “gas-permeable, liquid-
impermeable membrane.” For that reason, we will not sustain
the examiner’s rejection of claims 1, 4 and 6 on appeal under
35 U.S.C. § 103.
With regard to the examiner's rejection of claim 5 under
35 U.S.C. § 103 based on Iba, Dubois and Su, we share
appellant’s view as expressed on pages 4-5 of the reply brief,
that the examiner’s proposed combination of these patents
would likewise not have suggested appellant’s presently
claimed invention to the ordinarily skilled worker. In fact,
it appears that Su (col. 1) teaches away from utilizing a gas-
permeable, liquid-impermeable membrane in a vented lens
disinfecting appliance because of clogging of the membrane
pores during repeated uses of such a
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