Appeal No. 96-2043
Application 07/990,514
unfounded assumption or hindsight reconstruction to supply
deficiencies in the factual basis for the rejection. See In
re Warner, 379 F.2d 1011, 1017, 154 USPQ 173, 178 (CCPA 1967),
cert. denied, 389 U.S. 1057 (1968). Our reviewing court has
repeatedly cautioned against employing hindsight by using the
appellant's disclosure as a blueprint to reconstruct the
claimed invention from the isolated teachings of the prior
art. See, e.g., Grain Processing Corp. v. American
Maize-Products Co., 840 F.2d 902, 907, 5 USPQ2d 1788, 1792
(Fed. Cir. 1988).
With this as background, we turn to the rejections of the
claims on appeal.
a. Claims 1 and 3-7
Claim 1 calls for an angioplasty system including an
elongated catheter having proximal and distal ends and a
longitudinal lumen open to the distal end for receiving a
guidewire, a plurality of fiber-optic waveguides contained in
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