Appeal No. 1999-2182 Page 3
Application No. 08/710,704
respective positions articulated by the appellant and the examiner. As a consequence of
our review, we make the determinations which follow.
All of the claims stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103. The guidance provided by
our reviewing court for considering rejections under Section 103 is as follows: The test for
obviousness is what the combined teachings of the prior art would have suggested to one
of ordinary skill in the art. See, for example, In re Keller, 642 F.2d 413, 425, 208 USPQ
871, 881 (CCPA 1981). In establishing a prima facie case of obviousness, it is incumbent
upon the examiner to provide a reason why one of ordinary skill in the art would have been
led to modify a prior art reference or to combine reference teachings to arrive at the
claimed invention. See Ex parte Clapp, 227 USPQ 972, 973 (Bd. Pat. App. & Int. 1985).
To this end, the requisite motivation must stem from some teaching, suggestion or
inference in the prior art as a whole or from the knowledge generally available to one of
ordinary skill in the art and not from the appellant's disclosure. See, for example, Uniroyal,
Inc. v. Rudkin-Wiley Corp., 837 F.2d 1044, 1052, 5 USPQ2d 1434, 1439 (Fed. Cir. 1988),
cert. denied, 488 U.S. 825 (1988).
The appellant’s invention is directed generally to dispensers for viscous products
and in particular to overcoming the problem in such dispensers of eliminating unreliable
dosing and difficulty in clearing the last part of the product from the dispenser. As
manifested in claim 1, the dispenser is described as having a closed, continuous base
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