Appeal No. 2006-0930
Application No. 09/905,540
Chips & Salsa) sample, a unitary package including snack chips
and a dip-condiment tub would provide a convenient “2-in-1”
package of goods commonly used together. (FF19.) Under these
circumstances, a person having ordinary skill in the art would
5 have found it prima facie obvious to provide a tub of dip-
condiment within Zimmerman’s package, thus arriving at a kit
encompassed by appealed claim 1. With respect to the “space
efficiency” limitation recited in appealed claim 1, the
appellant has proffered no evidence establishing that when a
10 dip-condiment tub is included in Zimmerman’s canister, the
“space efficiency” would be outside the range recited in
appealed claim 1. As noted above, Zimmerman teaches that the
canister containing the chips has a packed volumetric bulk
density (i.e., space efficiency) of about 0.1 g/cm3 to about 0.35
15 g/cm3, which substantially overlaps the appellant’s claimed range
of greater than about 0.15 g/cm3. Because a dip-condiment tub is
necessarily denser than relatively light snack chips and the tub
would replace the space occupied by less dense snack chips, it
would reasonably appear that the packed volumetric bulk density
20 (“space efficiency”) of the resulting combination would
necessarily have a packed volumetric bulk density or space
efficiency within the appellant’s claimed range. (FF34.) In re
23
Page: Previous 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007