Appeal No. 2006-1356
Application No. 10/375,826
Concerning the Section 103 rejection of claims 6, 7, 13, 17
and 18, appellant presents a separate argument only for claim 7,
which recites that the “film covers less than all surfaces of
said article.” We agree with the examiner, however, that it
would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art to
apply the polymeric material of the references to only some
surfaces of the cork or bottle for a variety of reasons, not the
least of which is cost reduction.
As for separately argued claim 20 which recites that the
polyolefin may be polyethylene, we fully concur with the examiner
that Capone’s teaching that polyethylene is effective at removing
TCA from wine would have motivated one of ordinary skill in the
art to use polyethylene as the polymeric material in WO ‘648. We
are not persuaded by appellant’s argument of why “would one use
the polyethylene taught by Capone as a coating on a cork in the
manner taught by the WO 00/64648 and WO 00/64649 references?”
(Page 5 of brief, penultimate paragraph). The answer is quite
simple. Since WO ‘648 teaches a myriad of polymers, including
polyethylene based polymers, for interreacting with taint-causing
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