Appeal No. 2001-1078 Page 4
Application No. 08/750,910
obviousness. See In re Rijckaert, 9 F.3d 1531, 1532, 28
USPQ2d 1955, 1956 (Fed. Cir. 1993). A prima facie case of
obviousness is established by presenting evidence that would
have led one of ordinary skill in the art 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) and In re Lintner, 458 F.2d 1013,
1016, 173 USPQ 560, 562 (CCPA 1972).
Claim 1, the sole independent claim on appeal, reads as
follows:
A plant cube comprising a block of mineral fibres,
the block having a top surface, a bottom surface and four
side surfaces, wherein the block comprises a laminated
structure formed from a superfolded layer of parallel
oriented mineral wool fibres, thereby forming a plurality
of sublayers connected by bends in the layer, wherein all
the mineral fibers in the sublayers are parallel to each
other.
Blok's invention relates to a water-absorbing porous
product made of water-absorbing mineral fibrous material for
the cultivation of plants. The product comprises
water-repellent oxygen-storing elements which are able to
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007