Appeal No. 1996-0783 Page 5
Application No. 08/102,297
All of the appealed apparatus and method claims require a
device for detecting an analyte that includes a base portion,
a cover portion, and a separation matrix that is "vertically
adjacent", "compressed to" and "coincident with" a detection
means (claims 1, 16, and 19). The degree of compression of
the separation matrix and detection means is required to be
between 14-43 percent by volume. Moreover, the appealed
claims require a cover portion aperture cross-sectional area
that is less than 90 percent of the separation matrix cross-
sectional area.
The examiner acknowledges that neither of the relied upon
primary references (Ertinghausen nor Charlton) discloses the
compression and cross-sectional area limitations of the
claimed
subject matter (answer, pages 3-5). According to the
examiner, however, it would have been obvious to utilize the
claimed compression and aperture size in either of the applied
Charlton or Ertinghausen references since such a modification
would have been suggested as an optimization of result
effective variables.
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007