Appeal No. 2004-0187 Page 6
Application No. 09/745,098
evaluating Leenaards in the light of Section 103 does not cause us to depart from our
opinion that this reference fails to disclose or teach that the curved portion of the crown
be adapted to be the same shape as the contour of the mouth of the bottle. Notably,
the examiner has not contended that Ferngren overcomes this shortcoming. Thus, we
are left to conclude that the combined teachings of Leenaards and Ferngren fail to
establish a prima facie case of obviousness with regard to the subject matter recited in
claim 7, from which claim 13 depends, and we will not sustain this rejection.
Claims 14-16 stand rejected as being unpatentable over Leenaards in view of
Myer. Claim 14 is directed to a method of producing crown closures which comprises
the steps of providing a die press, providing metal sheets which may be die pressed
into crown closures, using the die press to form blanks having a diameter of about 1.4
inches (35.5 mm), and using the die press to form crown closures using the blanks.
The examiner asserts that Leenaards discloses all of the subject matter recited in
independent claim 14 except for the method of forming the crown closures from metal
sheets by the use of a die press. However, it is the examiner’s opinion that it would
have been obvious to do so in view of the teachings of Myer.
Leenaards is silent as to how the crown closures disclosed therein are formed.
Myer discloses crown closures for bottles, and teaches forming them by “conventional
single cycle operation of a punch press” (column 2, lines 69-71). Thus, it is our view
that Myer provides evidence that at the time of the appellants’ invention it was known in
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