Appeal No. 2005-1411 Page 3
Application No. 10/340,772
OPINION
In reaching our decision in this appeal, we have given careful consideration to
the appellant's specification and claims, to the applied prior art references, and to the
respective positions articulated by the appellant and the examiner. As a consequence
of our review, we make the determinations which follow.
Independent claim 1 reads as follows:
1. A vessel for holding flowable material comprising:
a) an upwardly convex[1] curved body having a long
axis and the body is formed of rollable sheets of flexible,
chemically stable material that has a density of less than
1.0[2] and a thickness of at least 0.1 inches and having a
head end and a tail end,
b) a head end bulkhead and a tail end bulkhead
formed of the same material as the body sealably secured to
the head end and tail end respectively of the body to form a
sealed vessel for holding flowable materials, and
c) Wherein the vessel is self-supporting in water and
in land, and the vessel has a width of at least 3.0 feet and a
depth of at least 1.5 feet and a length of at least 8 feet.
1 In light of the agreement between the examiner and the appellant that the claim terminology
“upwardly convex” will be changed to “upwardly concave” by examiner’s amendment subsequent to this
decision (see interview summary and communication mailed March 18, 2005), we have interpreted
“upwardly convex” in claims 1 and 6 as “upwardly concave” for purposes of this appeal. The term
“convex” in the first line of the first paragraph on page 7 of the specification should also be changed to
“concave” for consistency.
2 Although this issue is not before us in this appeal, we note that the members of this panel are
not familiar with any standard definition of “density” which is expressed without units, as the appellant has
done on page 7 of the specification and in claims 1 and 6.
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