Appeal No. 2005-2046
Application No. 10/101,004
and the U.S. patent issuing therefrom, U.S. Patent No. 6,682,726B2 (‘726), issued Jan.
27, 2004 and filed April 30, 2001. Appellants specification, page 6, states that the
“aqueous shaving compositions may include about 0.05 to 3 ... by weight polyethylene
oxide and about 0.1 to 5%...by weight polysaccharide gum.” The compositions of
Examples 1-5 of the ‘726 patent are within these ranges and thus inherently provide the
claimed stress ratio and shear rate. Claims 6, 7 and 15 of the ‘726 patent appear to
read on claim 1 of the present application. The ‘726 patent and ‘775 publication are to
the same assignee, The Gillette Company, and lists Jenifer T. Marchesi, Yun Xu and
Kenneth T. Dodd as inventors. The present application lists Kenneth T. Dodd, John v.
Lawler, and Christopher S. Coughlin as inventors. Since the inventors do not appear to
be the same, we recommend that the examiner consider whether a rejection of the
claims under 35 U.S.C. 102 (f) is appropriate. In addition, the examiner should
consider whether a double patenting rejection under 35 U.S.C. 101 is appropriate over
claims 6, 7 and 15 of the ‘726 patent.
With regard to the pending rejection of claims 1-28 under 35 U.S.C. §103(a)
over Stoner in view of Gold and King, the examiner should also consider the following
upon remand of the application.
1. The examiner should carefully review the disclosure of Stoner. It would
appear that Stoner exemplifies polyethylene glycol, PEG 14M (molecular weight
600,000) in Example 4, and PEG-150 distearate (molecular weight 6000) in Example 5.
Appellants argue that a polyethylene glycol with a molecular weight greater than
3
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