Appeal No. 2006-0276
Application 10/144,463
more than a year prior to appellant’s filing date. As the examiner finds, the surface
characteristics of the breadstick are not reported.
We find that appellants acknowledge that “[e]dible analogs of eating utensils are known”
(specification, page 2), and conclude that one of ordinary skill in the culinary arts armed with the
knowledge in the art acknowledged by appellant would have recognized from Hays and
Wellman that Ashley used a breadstick as an edible eating utensil for winding “spaghetti” or
“linguini.” We further determine that this person would have recognized from Vecchiola that the
nature of strands of hair and spaghetti are similar with respect to winding on a rod-shaped utensil
or tool (col. 1, ll. 26-42), and further would have recognized the similarities between the rod-
shaped breadstick used to wind spaghetti or linguini and the rod-shaped devices used to wind
hair, including the brush of Vecchiola, having staggered rows of projections (e.g., cols. 2-3 and
FIG. 1), and the curler of Magee, having randomly spaced projections (e.g., cols. 1-3 and FIGs.
1 and 4), the latter reference teaching that the projections serve to retain the strands of hair on the
rod-shaped curler (e.g., col. 1, ll. 23-28 and 61-65). In view of this evidence, we are of the
opinion that one of ordinary skill in the culinary arts would have been led by the combined
teachings of Hays, Wellman, Vecchiola and Magee to modify the surface of a breadstick to
include any manner of random bread projections in the reasonable expectation of obtaining a
breadstick that can be used to wind and retain pasta and thus, simultaneously eat the pasta-
wound breadstick.
Accordingly, one of ordinary skill in the culinary arts routinely following the combined
teachings of the applied references would have reasonably arrived at the claimed device
encompassed by appealed claim 21, as we interpreted this claim above, including each and every
limitation thereof arranged as required therein, without recourse to appellant’s specification and
claims. See, e.g., Pro-Mold & Tool Co. v. Great lakes Plastics Inc., 75 F.3d 1568, 1573,
37 USPQ 1626, 1629-30 (Fed. Cir. 1996) (“In this case, the reason to combine [the references]
arose from the very nature of the subject matter involved, the size of the card intended to be
enclosed.”); In re Gorman, 933 F.2d 982, 986-87, 18 USPQ2d 1885, 1888-89 (Fed. Cir. 1991)
(“The extent to which such suggestion [to select elements of various teachings in order to form
the claimed invention] must be explicit in, or may be fairly inferred from, the references, is
decided on the facts of each case, in light of the prior art and its relationship to the applicant’s
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