Appeal No. 1998-2941 Page 10
Application No. 08/061,985
Reexamination Control No. 90/003,682
In rejecting claims under 35 U.S.C. § 103, the examiner
bears the initial burden of presenting a prima facie case of
obviousness. See In re Rijckaert, 9 F.3d 1531, 1532, 28
USPQ2d 1955, 1956 (Fed. Cir. 1993). A prima facie case of
obviousness is established by presenting evidence that would
have led one of ordinary skill in the art to combine the
relevant teachings of the references to arrive at the claimed
invention. See In re Fine, 837 F.2d 1071, 1074, 5 USPQ2d
1596, 1598 (Fed. Cir. 1988) and In re Lintner, 458 F.2d 1013,
1016, 173 USPQ 560, 562 (CCPA 1972).
In this case, all of the examiner's rejections of method
claims 1 to 19 are founded on the basis that it would have
been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time
the invention was made to have modified Hanson's method of
pasteurizing liquid whole eggs to have included an aseptical
packaging step to extend the shelf life of a refrigerated egg
product based on the teachings of the News and Observer
article, the PSA abstract and the thesis of Hamid-Samimi,
and/or to have pasteurized Hanson's liquid whole eggs as
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