Appeal No. 1996-1945
Application No. 07/960,421
THE REJECTION
The Examiner entered the following ground of rejection:
Claims 2-3, 5-16, 18-24 and 26-34 are rejected as unpatentable under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103 over Moretti. (Examiner’s Answer, page 3).
OPINION
We will limit our discussion to claim 26, the sole independent claim.
It is well established that the examiner has the initial burden under § 103 to
establish a prima facie case of obviousness. In re Oetiker, 977 F.2d 1443, 1445, 24
USPQ2d 1443, 1444 (Fed. Cir. 1992); In re Piasecki, 745 F.2d 1468, 1471-72, 223
USPQ 785, 787-88 (Fed. Cir. 1984). To that end, the examiner must show that some
objective teaching or suggestion in the applied prior art, or knowledge generally
available in the art, would have led one of ordinary skill in the art to arrive at the
claimed invention. Pro-Mold & Tool Co. v. Great Lakes Plastics, Inc., 75 F.3d 1568,
1573, 37 USPQ2d 1626, 1630 (Fed. Cir. 1996).
The Examiner asserts the claimed invention is unpatentable over Moretti.
Specifically the Examiner states:
‘721 [Moretti] discloses packaging receptacles comprising an intermediate
metal layer (9) and dual thermoweldable plastic layers (8, 10). The plastic
is polyethylene, the metal is aluminum, page 3, line 30. The metal is
oxidizable. The polyethylene layer would inherently release no
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