Appeal No. 2006-0930
Application No. 09/905,540
Best, 562 F.2d 1252, 1255, 195 USPQ 430, 433-34 (CCPA 1977).
As a corollary, one of ordinary skill in the art would have
found it prima facie obvious to modify the Snack-A-Dip® (Lightly
Salted Tortilla Chips & Salsa) sample by replacing the canister
5 of randomly packed tortilla chips with an appropriately sized
canister of snack chips in a nested arrangement as described in
Zimmerman in order to obtain the advantages of increased bulk
density and improved shapes for efficient condiment dipping.
Either way, we reject the notion that the examiner has relied
10 “on his own experience to provide the necessary motivation to
modify and combine the references.” (Supplemental appeal brief
at 7.) Here, the examiner has identified the motivation,
suggestion, or teaching in the prior art for one of ordinary
skill in the art to combine Zimmerman with Snack-A-Dip® (Lightly
15 Salted Tortilla Chips & Salsa), thus arriving at a product
encompassed by appealed claim 1.
The appellant argues that “it would not be obvious to a
skilled artisan to select the Zimmerman kit comprising a
container and chips for combination with Snack-a-Dip over the
20 myriad of other chip choices, until one reads the present
specification and finds out the importance of the chip’s surface
area and the space efficiency of the kit.” (Supplemental appeal
24
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