Appeal No. 1998-2183
Application No. 08/529,195
the following matters.
As evident from our assessment of the applied art above,
there is no prior art teaching of the claimed feature of a
protective cap of soft material covering an injection needle
so that the needle pierces the protective cap and is thereby
sealed. Should the examiner be aware of such a teaching, the
examiner may determine it appropriate to reassess the
patentability of the claimed subject matter. Starting with
the knowledge in the art of glass syringes with filling
volumes of less than 5 ml, a determination should be made as
to whether the disclosures of Sudo and Kimber (U.S. Patent No.
5,135,514, of record) would have been suggestive of replacing
glass with a cyclic olefin compound or polypropylene,
respectively. While glass may have been known to be used6
with prefilled, disposable syringes for injections of less
than 5 ml (specification, pages 2 through 4), it does not
appear that either of Declarants Spallek or Spingler were
6Appellants make reference to preferred cyclic olefin
copolymers and glass-clear polypropylene (specification, pages
9 and 15).
8
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