Appeal No. 97-0774
Application 08/121,525
The invention disclosed in the subject application relates
to a surgical sponge assembly having a plurality of individual
sponge members (12) slidably mounted on a flexible strand (16)
between a retaining stop (32) and a slide member (18) to form a
surgical nasal pack for insertion into a patient’s nasal passage.
The slide member (18) is selectively slidable along the flexible
strand (16) to compress the individual sponge members between the
slide member and the retaining stop.
A copy of the appealed claims, as these claims appear in the
appendix to appellants’ brief, is appended to this decision.
The following reference is relied upon by the examiner as
evidence of obviousness in support of his rejection under § 103:
Schoenholz et al. 3,965,905 June 29, 1976
(Schoenholz)
Claims 1, 2, 8, 10, 11, 18, 26, 29 and 45 stand rejected
under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable solely over
Schoenholz.
We have carefully considered the issues raised in this
appeal together with the examiner’s remarks and appellants’
arguments. As a result, we conclude that the rejection of the
appealed claims cannot be sustained. Our reasons for this
conclusion follow.
Independent claims 1 and 45 call for a surgical sponge
assembly having a plurality of sponge members for contacting
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