Appeal No. 2000-1071 Page 5
Application No. 08/851,381
Cloots fails to disclose or teach several of the requirements of the method set forth
in the appellants’ claim 31. Initially, we point out that the Cloots tampon is not “a tampon
intended for digital insertion,” that is, for insertion without the use of an applicator, as is
recited in the preamble of the claim 31. With regard to step (a) of the claim, the Cloots
tampon is made of batts of absorbent material enclosed in a wrapper (column 4, lines 3-9),
which then is radially and axially compressed into its final shape (see Figures 2A-2K and
columns 4-6). The material is not rolled, and therefore, the reference fails to disclose or
teach the step of “rolling a length of compressible material into a rolled layered pledget.”
Step (b) requires “displacing radially central layers of the absorbent material . . . to
produce an increase in fiber density . . . along an axially-extending central region of the
tampon” as opposed to that in the surrounding regions. Cloots provides no explicit
teaching that such occurs, although the method disclosed therein includes two instances
where forming tools are pushed into the compressed batt at the withdrawal end to form an
elongated opening to receive an applicator stick. However, to conclude that the insertions
of these two forming tools inherently result in the specified increase in fiber density in the
central region, which appears to be what the examiner has done is, in our view, not
supported by the disclosure and therefore must be considered to be mere speculation. In
this regard, consistent with their function of forming a recess sized to allow an applicator
stick to be inserted into the end of the tampon, both of the tools are illustrated as having
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