Appeal No. 2006-1232
Application No. 09/761,500
14 and argue there is nothing in the prior art to teach the combination of
Ausnit and Thomas (Br. 7).
That Thomas’ pocket is formed by upstanding panels 36, 38 thermally
fused to body panels 12, 14 rather than unitarily formed as one piece with
the body panels is of no moment. Appellants’ claims do not require one-
piece construction of the walls and wall segments, as explained more fully
below. In any event, Ausnit does disclose unitary one-piece formation of the
walls and the wall segments forming the pocket. The differences in panel
construction between Ausnit and Thomas are not of such a nature as to have
discouraged the substitution of Ausnit’s perforations 54 with a peelable seal
at 68, an art-recognized equivalent to the perforations, as evidenced by
Thomas.
For the reasons discussed above, Appellants’ arguments fail to
persuade us that the Examiner erred in rejecting claims 1-4 as being
unpatentable over Ausnit in view of Thomas. The rejection is sustained.
The Thomas rejection
We turn finally to the rejection of claims 1-4 as being unpatentable
over Thomas. The examiner finds that Thomas discloses all the features
claimed except for the wall segments (upstanding panels 36, 38) being
formed from package walls 12, 14 (Answer 5). The Examiner contends that
it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art at the
time the invention was made to form the wall segments of Thomas from the
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