Appeal No. 2002-1181 7
Application 09/576,154
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.), cert. denied, 488 U.S. 825
(1988). Applying this guidance to the matter at hand, we find ourselves in agreement
with the appellants that the rejection should not be sustained, essentially for the
reasons expressed on pages 11-14 of the Brief.
At the outset, we point out that neither reference is concerned with providing a
bubble container having a weight distribution such that it will move to an upright position
from a tilted position. The essence of the examiner’s position seems to be that it would
have been obvious to provide the Novak device with a rounded bottom, and that doing
so would cause the device to be self-rightable. This reasoning is defective, for several
reasons. While it has an interior volume for receiving bubble solution, the Novak
container has a flat bottom, and thus clearly lacks the rounded bottom required by the
claims. McNett does not provide a container for bubble fluid, but teaches that this
material be placed on mouthpiece 28 (column 4, line 53 et seq.). It is the squeeze bulb
that is provided with a rounded bottom disclosed in the McNett device, and not a
container for bubble solution, and hence, McNett cannot be relied upon for teaching
that the bubble-containing container have a rounded bottom. Moreover, the entire
McNett device is installed inside a toy animal, and therefore the rounded bottom
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007