Appeal No. 2000-0874 Page 7
Application No. 08/695,554
having ordinary skill in the art. Since the examiner has not
made the above-noted determinations necessary to support a
rejection under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103, the examiner has not established a prima facie case of
obviousness and accordingly the decision of the examiner to
reject claims 26 to 30 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 is reversed.
With regard to claim 26, an independent claim directed to
a process for fabricating a one-piece sheet metal can body,
based on our analysis and review of Clowes, it is our opinion
that Clowes clearly lacks all the limitations recited in
paragraphs A, B and C of claim 26. One such limitation is the
step of providing a planar blank of "flat-rolled sheet metal"
(paragraph A) which is subsequently draw formed into a drawn
cup (paragraphs B and C). Since Clowes does not teach forming
his drawn cup (see Figure 2) from a planar blank of "flat-
rolled sheet metal" and the examiner has not made any
determination in the rejection before us in this appeal that
it would have been obvious at the time the invention was made
to a person having ordinary skill in the art to have formed
Clowes' drawn cup from a planar blank of "flat-rolled sheet
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