Appeal No. 2006-1760
Application No. 09/728,697
A principal argument advanced by the appellants places
emphasis on Riddell’s disclosure that the packaging material “has
sufficiently low tear strength to permit opening of the package”
(column 2, lines 14-15). Appellants contend that “[i]nherently,
then, Riddell teaches that its tear tape opening system or means
5 is only useful with a packaging material having a low tear
strength (page 2 of reply brief). However, appellants seem to
overlook that Riddell actually teaches that the tear strength of
the polyethylene films is only sufficiently low to permit opening
of the package which, manifestly, is a property shared by
appellants’ “tear-resistant film.” Clearly, tear-resistant films
within the scope of the appealed claims must also have a
sufficiently low tear strength to permit opening of the package.
Furthermore, based on the collective teachings of Riddell and
Osborn, we are confident that one of ordinary skill in the art
would have needed to resort to only routine experimentation to
determine the range of tear strength for polyethylene films that
are operable with the tape strip of Riddell. We again note that
appellants have not made any argument that the claimed tearable
tape strip is somehow structurally different than the one fairly
taught by Riddell.
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