Appeal No. 2004-0061
Application 09/745,762
retained within a first large interior compartment of the bag and
divided therefrom by an interior dividing wall which segregates
the second compartment from the remainder of the first large
interior compartment.
As for the examiner’s further position that the detachable
absorbent sheet (22) in Shreim, identified by the examiner as
corresponding to the rollable mat of appellant’s claims on
appeal, can be formed of the same PVC material as the exterior of
the bag “since it has been held to be within the general skill of
a worker in the art to select a known material on the basis of
its suitability for the intended use as a matter of obvious
design choice,” and the position that it would have been obvious
to one having ordinary skill in the art to make sheet/mat (22) of
Shreim “being permanently affixed as claimed, since it has been
held that constructing a formerly integral structure in various
elements involves only routine skill in the art,” we find such
positions to be untenable and entirely contrary to the clear
teachings in the Shreim reference (page 1, lines 97-110)
concerning the detachable, absorbent fabric sheet (22). In our
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