Appeal No. 1998-2817
Application No. 08/455,366
a diaper should not be so great that the contractive force is
low enough to allow sagging/slipping of the diaper on the
wearer (see col. 34, ll. 48-50) and that for wearing stability
elastic creep should be kept to a minimum (see col. 34, ll.
51-59). Based on
these teachings in Weil, it is our opinion that it would have
been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art prior to
the appellants’ invention to minimize the hysteresis loss and
the elastic creep of the elastic material used to produce the
closed-loop waistband disclosed in Ales.
Further, it is beyond question that the closed-loop waist
elastic system suggested by the combined teachings of Ales and
Weil would have had some measurable magnitude of decay over
three cycles, just as samples 1 to 7 described in the
appellants’ specification had a measurable magnitude of decay
over three cycles. The only difference between the prior
teachings and claim 1 is that claim 1 call for a maximum
magnitude of decay over three cycles of less than 76.98
grams. However, where the general conditions of a claim are
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