Appeal No. 2003-0358
Application 08/982,958
in view of Turnbull, Hsu or Ennis as applied to claims 1, 2, 4, 5 and 32 through 36 above . 1,2 We
refer to the examiner’s answer and to appellant’s brief for a complete exposition of the opposing
views of the parties.
In order to establish a prima facie case of obviousness, the examiner must show that some
objective teaching, suggestion or motivation in the applied prior art taken as a whole and/or
knowledge generally available to one of ordinary skill in this art would have led that person to
the claimed invention as a whole, including each and every limitation of the claims, without
recourse to the teachings in appellant’s disclosure. See generally, In re Rouffet, 149 F.3d 1350,
1358, 47 USPQ2d 1453, 1458 (Fed. Cir. 1998); Pro-Mold and Tool Co. v. Great Lakes Plastics,
Inc., 75 F.3d 1568, 1573, 37 USPQ2d 1626, 1629-30 (Fed. Cir. 1996); In re Oetiker, 977 F.2d
1443, 1445, 24 USPQ2d 1443, 1444 (Fed. Cir. 1992); In re Fine, 837 F.2d 1071, 1074-76,
5 USPQ2d 1596, 1598-1600 (Fed. Cir. 1988); In re Dow Chem. Co., 837 F.2d 469, 473,
5 USPQ2d 1529, 1531-32 (Fed. Cir. 1988).
We find that, when considered in light of the written description in the specification as
interpreted by one of ordinary skill in this art, see, e.g., In re Hyatt, 211 F.3d 1367, 1372,
54 USPQ2d 1664, 1667 (Fed. Cir. 2000); In re Morris, 127 F.3d 1048, 1054-55, 44 USPQ2d
1023, 1027 (Fed. Cir. 1997), In re Zletz, 893 F.2d 319, 321-22, 13 USPQ2d 1320, 1322 (Fed.
Cir. 1989), including the meaning for certain terms in the claims established in the written
description in the specification (pages 7-13), see, e.g., Morris, supra; Zletz, supra, the plain
language of appealed independent claim 1 specifies a laminate comprising at least two films and
a printed image label trapped therebetween. The first film is a substantially gas-impermeable
multilayer film capable of delaminating into a gas-impermeable portion and a non-perforated
gas-permeable portion, the portions in adherence at a predetermined intra-film cohesive strength.
The second film is a perforated, gas-permeable film which is bonded to the non-perforated gas-
permeable portion of the first film at a bond strength that is greater than the intra-film cohesive
1 Appealed claims 1, 2, 4 through 6 and 32 through 37 are all of the claims in the application.
See the appendix to the brief.
2 Answer, pages 3-9. We have not considered Kocher et al. discussed by the examiner on page 9
of the answer as the reference has not been cited in the statement of any ground of rejection. See
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