Appeal No. 95-4847
Application No. 08/079,222
drug is slowly released into the body passageway (page 7,
column 2, lines 50-57). Thus, Schatz would have taught one of
ordinary skill in the art to place a film on the outer surface
of a stent which would interact with the body lumen in which
the stent is installed. What Schatz does not explicitly teach
is that this film could be of fibrin, as is required by claims
1 and 29.
For this the examiner looks to Spears, which is directed
to a method for treating an arterial wall injured during
angioplasty. The primary method disclosed is positioning an
angioplasty catheter in the damaged area, and then delivering
a bioprotective material between the arterial wall and the
catheter so that it is entrapped therebetween and permeates
into the fissures and small vessels of the arterial wall (see
the Abstract and Figures 2 and 2A). One of the forms in which
the bioprotective material is provided is as a shell of
microspheres within which drugs can be encapsulated (column 7,
lines 39 and 40). Among the materials listed as the
encapsulating medium is fibrin (column 7, line 61). Spears
goes on to state:
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