Appeal No. 2000-1449
Application No. 08/838,133
this regard, note column 2, lines 51-55, of Arona-Delonghi (“The
retention member body T has on its lower part, a plurality of
vertically disposed locking or fastening ribs 10, which are
relatively flexible and which lock against the neck or crown of the
bottle in order to prevent its slipping upwardly . . . .”).
The test for obviousness is not whether the features of a
secondary reference may be bodily incorporated into the structure
of the primary reference; nor is it that the claimed invention must
be expressly suggested in any one or all of the references.
Rather, the test is what the combined teachings of the references
would have suggested to those of ordinary skill in the art. In re
Keller, 642 F.2d 413, 425, 208 USPQ 871, 881 (CCPA 1981).
In the present case, Arona-Delonghi’s teaching at column 2,
lines 51-55, of providing relatively flexible locking ribs 10 for
retaining the lower closure part on the neck or crown of the bottle
in order to prevent its slipping upwardly would have furnished the
artisan with ample suggestion to substitute flexible hook-shaped
locking ribs as taught by Arona-Delonghi for the projections 16 of
Sander’s tamper-evident band 15. Suggestion for the above is found
in the advantage Arona-Delonghi’s flexible hook-shaped locking ribs
provide of facilitating the positioning of the locking ribs beneath
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