Appeal No. 2006-3175
Application No. 10/419,601
Claim 5, which further recites that the written indicator indicates a day of the
week, is also met by Luedde. As discussed above, Luedde discloses identifying
indicia including alpha-numeric symbols in combination with colors. In much the
same way that different colors identify or indicate different days of the week
(specification, p. 2), that is, simply because the user understands each color to
represent a particular day of the week, alpha-numeric characters are fully capable
of being used to identify or indicate different days of the week and, in fact, do
indicate a day of the week to a user who associates such alpha-numeric characters
with particular days of the week.
We appreciate that Luedde does not disclose printing the names (i.e.,
“MONDAY,” “TUESDAY,” “WEDNESDAY,” etc.) on the elastomeric bands.
Claim 5, however, does not require such. Rather, claim 5 simply requires a written
indicator that indicates a day of the week. As discussed above, the alpha-numeric
characters disclosed by Luedde are fully capable of such.
Claims 1-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable
over Luedde in view of Ricks and further in view of Murphy.
Luedde, and its relevance to the claimed subject matter, is discussed above.
Inasmuch as baby bottles are beverage containers from which people (i.e., babies)
drink and the need for and desirability of distinguishing the bottles of respective
infants was well known in the art at the time of appellant’s invention, as evidenced
by Ricks (col. 1, ll. 7-10), one of ordinary skill in the art would have recognized
the applicability of Luedde’s beverage identification method, system and device to
baby bottles to distinguish one baby’s bottles from other babies’ bottles at large
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