Appeal No. 1998-0243
Application 08/455,374
invention. In re Dillon, 919 F.2d 688, 693, 16 USPQ2d 1879, 1901 (Fed. Cir. 1990), cert.
denied., 500 U.S. 904 (1991). Rather, as stated in In re Beattie, 974 F.2d 1309, 1312, 24
USPQ2d 1040, 1042 (Fed. Cir. 1992), “As long as some motivation or suggestion to combine the
references is provided by the prior art taken as a whole, the law does not require that the
references be combined for the reasons contemplated by the inventor.” See also In re Kemps, 97
F.3d 1427, 1430, 40 USPQ2d 1309, 1311 (Fed. Cir. 1996). In the present case, folding the
material at the waist of a pair of training pants over the waist elastic to form a hem, as disclosed
by Magid in Figure. 2 and at col. 2, lines 42 to 52, would provide the self-evident advantage of a
hem, namely, as stated by the examiner, supra, “better integrity and strength at the waistband.”
We therefore conclude that Magid would have suggested to one of ordinary skill folding the
edges of the Nomura web 26 over the waist elastic members 4, as recited in the sixth step of
claim 1, in order to achieve the benefits of such an arrangement.
There still remains the question of whether the combination of Nomura and Magid would
have rendered obvious the final (ninth) step of claim 1, which reads:
forming a plurality of disposable absorbent articles having a respective plurality of
closed-loop waist-elastic systems in which each waist elastic system has an average
maximum magnitude of decay of less than about 66.67 grams in an extension range of
about 175 millimeters to about 300 millimeters over the first three cycles.
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