Appeal No. 1998-1306
Application 08/429,326
Under the foregoing circumstances, we are constrained to
regard the examiner as having failed to carry her initial burden of
establishing a prima facie case of obviousness with respect to
independent composition claim 1 and claims 2-15 which depend
therefrom.
As for independent article claim 16, the appellants argue
that the applied prior art contains no teaching or
suggestion of a composition package which is provided with a vapor
barrier as required by this claim. According to the examiner, "it
would have been obvious to package a material which must maintain a
low moisture content by putting it in a suitable package" (answer,
pages 5-6; emphasis added). The fatal deficiency of this obviousness
conclusion is the examiner's failure to provide any reference
teaching or suggestion con-cerning a prior art material "which must
maintain a low moisture content." It is only the appellants' own
disclosure which teaches the desirability of and reasons for
maintaining a low moisture content. Therefore, the examiner also has
failed to establish a prima facie case of obviousness with respect to
the claim 16 feature under consideration.
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