Appeal No. 95-2111
Application 07/771,173
Davies does not desire to distribute rays evenly, there would
be no reason for a person of ordinary skill in the art to
modify the Davies structure so as to obtain this result. In
view of the foregoing, we will not sustain the rejection under
35 U.S.C. § 103 of claims 4-7 as unpatentable over Davies in
view of Symonds.
We will now address the rejection of claims 9 and 10
under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as unpatentable over Vassiliadis.
Claim 9 (by its dependence on claim 1) and claim 10
recite that the laser light is diverted from the optical fiber
in an annular pattern. We have found above, that the optical
tip of Vassiliades does not inherently produce an “annular
pattern.” We also discern no suggestion in Vassiliades of
forming an “annular pattern.” As such, we will not sustain
this rejection.
Finally, we address the examiner’s rejection of
claim 12 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as unpatentable over Davies.
It is the examiner’s opinion that:
Davies teaches a method such as claimed
except for the recitation of the step of
inserting the fiber into the full length of
the channel to its optical tip. It would
have been obvious to the artisan of
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