Appeal No. 97-0684
Application 08/171,343
catheter. As the court stated in Uniroyal, 837 F.2d at 1051, 5
USPQ at 1438, “it is impermissible to use the claims as a frame
and the prior art references as a mosaic to piece together a
facsimile of the claimed invention.” This is precisely what the
examiner has done here, in our view. It follows that we cannot
support the examiner’s first theory of obviousness.
We now take up for consideration the examiner’s alternative
position that it also would have been obvious to one of ordinary
skill in the art to replace the vent path B of Sugiyama with a
removable vent tube as taught by Simpson at element 156 in order
to simplify the catheter, reduce its profile, and reduce its
cost. The difficulty we have with this rationale is that it runs
directly contrary to Sugiyama’s expressly stated purpose of
providing a triple-tube type catheter in order to eliminate the
need for Simpson’s removable vent tube and the alleged problems
caused thereby. In this regard, we note the following passage
from pages 4-5 of the Sugiyama translation:
In Simpson-Robert type systems, due to the
presence of the metal pipe for air bubble removal, the
flexibility of the catheter is impaired, and, as with
the Gruntzig type, there is the danger of injury to the
blood vessel walls in blood vessels which are highly
curved. In addition, there is also the possibility of
the metal pipe breaking through the catheter.
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