Appeal No. 97-4406
Application No. 08/436,255
manner past an obstruction for changing direction which functions
to close the sheath downstream of the collected waste. The
sheath then is carried away to a storage zone.
The examiner’s position is that while the specification is
enabling for a device in which waste is contained “within both
plastic (liquid impermeable) and textile (liquid permeable)
sheaths,” it is not enabling for “only containing waste within a
liquid permeable sheath,” which the examiner believes is the only
type of sheath that can meet the claim requirement of being
radially expandable (Answer, pages 3-4). As the appellant has
pointed out, the purpose of the enablement requirement is to
insure that one of ordinary skill in the art can make and use the
invention described in the claims without undue experimentation.
In the present case, the appellant has, through twenty-one pages
of specification, explained in detail the structure and operation
of the invention, including the characteristics of the sheaths.
The appellant has provided a thorough discussion of this
rejection on pages 3-6 of the Brief, in which he asserts that the
information provided in the specification, taken with the skill
that must be accorded to the artisan, is sufficient to allow one
of ordinary skill in the art to make and use the invention
recited in claim 1 without undue experimentation. We agree, for
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