Appeal No. 98-2787
Application 08/554,640
substantially coterminous with a terminal side edge of each
side margin at the intermediate portion (16) of the absorbent
article.
The examiner, recognizing this deficiency in the applied
reference, has urged that it would have been an obvious matter
of design choice to have provided such a relationship in the
Roessler reference, since appellants (in their specification)
have not disclosed that such relationship solves any stated
problem or is for any particular purpose. Based on the record
as a whole, we do not agree with the examiner's assertions
that the differences between the claimed invention and the
absorbent article of the Roessler patent can be considered to
be merely matters of "obvious design choice."
While it is true that appellants’ specification (page 3)
sets forth general advantages of the absorbent article without
attributing those advantages to specific structural features
of the absorbent article, appellants have now, in their brief
(page 14), indicated that the claimed positioning of a major
portion of a longitudinal end edge of each of the outboard
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Last modified: November 3, 2007