Appeal No. 2000-1449
Application No. 08/838,133
reasonably pertinent to the particular problem with which the
inventor was involved. Id.
The specification of the instant application indicates that
the field of appellant’s endeavor “relates to threaded tamper
evident container closures” (see page 1), and that a particular
problem with which appellant was involved was to provide “an
improved means of locking threaded tamper-evident closures to the
bottle neck” (see page 2). In our opinion, Arona-Delonghi is at
least reasonably pertinent to this particular problem, and thus
constitutes analogous art which was properly considered by the
examiner in combination with Sander in assessing the obviousness of
the subject matter recited in the appealed claims. In this regard,
we do not agree with appellant’s position to the effect that Arona-
Delonghi must be viewed as non-analogous art simply because it
pertains to a non-threaded tamper-evident container closure.
Concerning the relevance of Arona-Delonghi to the obviousness
issue raised in this appeal, we regard Arona-Delonghi as being
representative of the knowledge in the closure art of providing
flexible, upwardly facing, locking or fastening ribs on the inner
circumferential surface of a closure part for cooperating with a
downwardly facing shoulder on a bottle or container in order to
securely retain the closure part on the bottle or container. In
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