Appeal No. 99-0838
Application 29/064,666
The appealed design claim stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over
Imperial in view of Sweetheart. According to the examiner
“[T]he Sweetheart lid teaches that it would have been obvious to a designer of
ordinary capability in the art at the time the invention was made to modify the parapet
walls of the Imperial lid by changing their continuous slope to a combination of sloping
on one half of the lid, and level on the other half” (answer, page 4).
Other differences, such as the flat circular center section of the claimed lid, the planar lower flange and
the squaring of the outer upper corners of the parapet wall have been characterized by the examiner as
being de minimis and not sufficient to patentably distinguish the overall appearance of the claimed design
from the lid resulting from the combination of the Imperial lid and the Sweetheart lid.
Reference is made to the examiner's answer (Paper No. 8, mailed August 19, 1998) for the
examiner's complete reasoning in support of the above-noted rejection. Attention is directed to
appellants’ brief (Paper No. 7, filed May 5, 1998) and reply brief (Paper No. 9, filed October 23,
1998) for a full exposition of appellants’ arguments thereagainst.
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