Appeal No. 2005-1581 4
Application No. 09/681,692
chewing gum composition can take the form of pellets. (Col. 16, ll. 48-51). Yatka
discloses a coating for pellet chewing gum which is useful in producing sugarless
products. (Col. 3, ll. 12-14). Yatka teaches at column 1, lines 21-25 that: “Chewing
gums, including pellet chewing gums, are frequently enclosed with hard or soft
coatings. Coatings provide an opportunity for the manufacturer to vary product
characteristics such as taste, appearance and nutritional value.” Yatka discloses the
hard coating that comprises erythritol provides a desirable cooling effect and
crunchiness and is an improvement over the use of xylitol for hard coating of
sugarless chewing gum products because of its lower cost. Further Yatka discloses
that hard shell coatings made with erythritol are smoother than comparable xylitol
coatings. (Col. 3, ll. 16-20). Thus, a person of ordinary skill in the art would have
been motivated to coat the sugarless chewing gum product of McGrew with the
sugarless coating disclosed by Yatka to obtain the advantages associated with the
coating.
We do not agree that Yatka teaches away from using the chewing gum pellet
composition of McGrew. Yatka provides a discussion of components that are
commonly used in chewing gum formulations. A person of ordinary skill in the art
would have utilized the formulation discloses by McGrew in order to obtain a coated
pellet chewing gum product that would have had the cumulative advantages disclosed
by both McGrew and Yatka. Moreover, there is no disclosure in Yatka that states the
gum base must include a wax component. A person of ordinary skill in the art would
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