Appeal No. 2004-0380
Application No. 09/092,167
Contrary to the examiner’s aforequoted assertion, Hanzel
certainly does not meet all of the limitations of appealed
independent claim 40. Rather, this claim unquestionably
distinguishes over Hanzel, inter alia, via the here claimed steps
of “adding a cooking liquid in the pan with the [individual
frozen pasta product] segments and heating the segments and
cooking liquid for preparing the segments for consumption” as
well as via the here claimed consequences of the steps wherein
“the segments absorb the cooking liquid and the segment sides
adjacent one to another tend to join and stick together.” In
fact, none of the applied references contains any teaching or
suggestion regarding these cooking liquid features of the
independent claim on appeal.
In support of his opposing view, the examiner appears to
contend that the applied prior art teaches topping a pasta
product with pasta sauce prior to baking, that pasta sauce is
tantamount to the appellant’s claimed cooking liquid and that the
applied prior art would have suggested topping the frozen lasagna
segments of Hanzel with a pasta sauce prior to cooking the
segments thereby satisfying the requirements of appealed claim
40. The essence of this contention is described on page 7 of the
answer with the following language:
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