Appeal No. 2000-1669 Page 5
Application No. 08/433,328
USPQ 560, 562 (CCPA 1972). Furthermore, the conclusion that
the claimed subject matter is prima facie obvious must be
supported by evidence, as shown by some objective teaching in
the prior art or by knowledge generally available to one of
ordinary skill in the art that would have led that individual
to combine the relevant teachings of the references to arrive
at the claimed invention. See In re Fine, 837 F.2d 1071,
1074, 5 USPQ2d 1596, 1598 (Fed. Cir. 1988).
With this as background, we analyze the prior art applied
by the examiner in the rejection of the claims on appeal.
While the examiner has relied on Blower for his
disclosure of an oblong-shaped spacer, we find that, since
Kraemer also teaches an oblong-shaped spacer, the examiner's
rejection of claims 16 and 17 is appropriate with or without
the teaching of Blower.
As shown in Fig. 1, Kraemer's structure for holding a
dose of medicament is a generally oblong continuous solid
plastic tube (1) that "defines a chamber 2 having a volume of
from 200 to 500 ml, preferably from 250-350 ml" (column 2,
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