Appeal No. 2006-2630 Page 8
Application No. 10/255,014
area of the permanent seal that does not overlap the temporary seal. It does not
appear that these amendments were entered into the application, as confirmed by
the appellants’ representative during the oral hearing of November 14, 2006.
We further note that there is no support for such an amendment in the
specification, claims, or figures as originally filed. There is nothing in the
specification or in claim 1 that would require the temporary seal to have a width
different from the width of the permanent seal. As such, we agree with the
examiner that once the patch of seal material is permanently sealed to the pouch,
the temporary seal connecting this patch to the pouch is no longer structurally
discernable. The appellants have provided no evidence to the contrary and nothing
in the specification supports the appellants’ assertion of a structural difference
between the resulting seal and the seal of Wild.
On pages 2-3 of the Reply Brief, the appellants argue that the use of both a
temporary seal, which is applied using high temperature for a short duration, and a
permanent seal, which is applied using lower temperature for a longer duration,
improves the overall seal strength compared to a single sealing step. While this
may in fact be a structural difference between the seals if such relative
temperatures and relative durations were used, there is no support in the
specification for such a narrow interpretation of the method steps used to apply the
temporary and permanent seals of claim 1. Rather, as discussed supra, the
specification merely states that the seals are applied as heat seals. The
specification does not contain any disclosure regarding the temperature used to
apply the seals or the duration of the sealing steps.
The appellants further argue that the examiner is ignoring a critical
limitation of claim 1 of a temporary heat seal having a predetermined width around
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