Appeal No. 2002-1533
Application No. 09/055,377
other substantial material, the reusable container being provided
with a disposable sanitary cup 9 of treated or waxed paper that
functions as a single use inner liner for the container. The
liner is held in the container by means of a shoulder 11 and
flange 12 provided at the upper edge of the paper cup engaging in
a groove or recess 5 of the container. As explained by Myers:
The shoulder 11 is adapted to spring into the
groove or recess 5 with the flange 12 when the
container 9 is pressed into the jacket 1 from the top.
No extraneous parts are required to support the inner
container. This springing action of the shoulder 11
and flange 12 into the recess 5 also makes necessary
the destruction of the inside container before it can
be removed, as no grip can be obtained on the paper
member 9 without gouging into its interior surface,
thereby puncturing it. [Page 1, lines 68-79.]
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, e.g., Uniroyal, Inc. v.
8
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