United States Federal Circuit

Rejection of patent design application by the Board of Patent Appeals that was a continuation of a prior patented bottle is affirmed, where: 1) the Board's finding that nothing in the parent application's disclosure suggested anything uniquely patentable about the top portion of the bottle’s front panel is supported by substantial evidence because the parent disclosure does not distinguish the now-claimed top trapezoidal portion of the panel from the rest of the pentagon in any way; and 2) unclaimed boundary lines typically should satisfy the written description requirement only if they make explicit a boundary that already exists, but was unclaimed, in the original disclosure.

Appellate Information

• Decided 03/26/2013
• Published 03/26/2013

Judges

• PROST

Court

• United States Federal Circuit

Counsel