Appeal No. 2002-2175
Serial No. 09/060,960
VI. The 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) rejection based on a conventional golf
glove package in view of Connell
In this rejection, the examiner’s conclusion of obviousness
rests on the following rationale:
[i]t is a fact that gloves as well as other golf
accouterments are often packaged in containers for ease
of distribution. One need only look to the myriad of
golf products such as shoes, tees, golf balls, and even
golf clubs which are commonly transferred to the
consumer in some type of container, i.e., a box. Now,
taking into account the teachings of Connell, the
skilled artisan would have realized that packaged goods
could more easily be identified without disturbing the
package by attaching a label with descriptive matter
and graphical icons relating to the packaged item. The
extension of this teaching by Connell to include any
packaged good for retail sale would have been obvious.
. . . Thus, to have modified a conventional box
already housing gloves to include further facts about
the glove which a manufacturer may deem helpful to a
consumer during the selection and buying process and
which a manufacturer feels may help better educate the
consumer about his product would have been obvious to
the skilled artisan at the time the invention was made
[answer, pages 5 and 6].
In what appears to be an alternative approach to the
rejection, the examiner also submits that “the mere fact that the
claimed identifying means are confined to distinguishing a golf
glove from other articles that may be housed within the package
does not patentably distinguish the claimed invention over the
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