Appeal No. 96-0928
Application 08/310,971
DECISION ON APPEAL
This is a decision on an appeal from the examiner’s
rejection of claims 1 through 19. Claim 20, the only other2
claim pending in the application, has been withdrawn from
consideration as being directed to a non-elected invention.
The subject matter here claimed relates to a wound dressing
having a flexible absorbent layer 12. According to appellants’
invention as defined in the presently appealed claims, a
partially dehydrated hydrogel in which a portion of the water has
been removed is impregnated into the absorbent layer such that
the hydrogel can absorb wound exudate upon contact with the
wound.
Claim 1 is representative of the claimed subject matter
presently on appeal. A copy of this claim, as it appears in the
appendix to appellants’ brief, is appended to this decision.
An appeal in appellants’ parent application Serial No. 862,456 (see2
appeal No. 94-1384) resulted in a reversal of the examiner’s rejection under
35 U.S.C. § 103 and the introduction of a new ground of rejection pursuant to
37 CFR § 1.196(b). All of the appealed claims in this parent application
recited that the dehydrated hydrogel in the absorbent layer of the wound
dressing was substantially void of water. This limitation, which no longer
appears in the claims now on appeal in the present continuation-in-part
application, was the subject of our new ground of rejection under 35 U.S.C. §
112, second paragraph, in the parent application.
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