Appeal No. 99-0838
Application 29/064,666
the design characteristics of which are basically the same as the claimed design. Where we part
company with the examiner is in the conclusion that the Sweetheart lid design would have been
suggestive to the designer of ordinary skill in the art of modifications of the Imperial lid necessary to
arrive at a cup lid that looks like the cup lid claimed by appellants. More particularly, we do not agree
with the examiner that the Sweetheart lid would have been suggestive of changing the continuous slope
of the parapet wall on the Imperial lid to “a combination of sloping on one half of the lid, and level on
the other half” (answer, page 4).
In this regard, we agree with the arguments made by appellants on pages 2, 3 and 4 of their
reply brief, that even if one were to attempt to combine Sweetheart’s teachings with those of Imperial,
one would not come up with appellants’ claimed cup lid with its distinctive three-part upstanding
parapet wall. Simply stated, appellants’ completely surrounding upstanding parapet wall with three
distinctly different sections (i.e., a small horizontal-upper flat drinking aperture section, a sloping-middle
section and a large horizontal-lower flat section) is not taught or suggested either singly or in any
possible combination of the Imperial lid and the Sweetheart lid. Like appellants, we observe that
neither of the applied references shows or suggests a cup lid that includes a parapet wall with any level
section whatsoever. The completely surrounding parapet wall of the Imperial lid appears to slope
smoothly and continuously across the entire lid, while the upstanding wall portion of the Sweetheart lid
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Last modified: November 3, 2007