Appeal No. 2000-2045 Page 9
Application No. 09/206,253
not, in our view, present in or suggested by Bates and Cornish, and therefore we will not
sustain the rejection of claim 17 or of claims 32, 33, and 34, which are rejected on the
same grounds and depend therefrom.
Claim 18 recites that the container of claim 15 has a particular capacity, and the
label has a particular length. The appellants have described the size of the claimed
container as being “conventional” (specification, page 4). It is our view that, once having
knowledge of the dimensions of this conventional container, it would have been obvious to
the artisan to provide an encircling label of a complementary length, considering the
teaching of Cornish that the ends of the label should overlap for attachment to one another.
The rejection of claim 18 is sustained.
As for claim 19, it is our view that one of ordinary skill in the art would not have been
taught by Bates and Cornish that there should be two tamper-evident labels on a single
container, with a first one encircling the container while a second “much shorter” one does
not. The rejection of claim 19 is not sustained. The same is true of claim 28, which adds
this same feature to claim 18.
The “substantially cylindrical” container and top added by claim 29 to claim 15 is
clearly disclosed by Bates, and we will sustain this rejection.
Claim 30 adds to claim 29, and claim 31 to claim 15, the limitation that a portion of
the first surface of the label engages a portion of the second surface “at or adjacent the
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