Appeal No. 96-2866 Page 3
Application No. 08/185,221
Claims 21, 23 and 25 stand rejected as being unpatentable
over Longfellow in view Leuenberger as applied to claims 20 and
24 above, and further in view of Bray.
Both of the above-noted rejections are bottomed on the
examiner's view that:
Longfellow discloses a wire having a cutting edge
that is placed in a bone as a fixation element (see
Longfellow's figure 1 and appellant's specification
pages 5 and 6 for a further discussion of these
wires). Longfellow discloses that the wires are2
inserted into and through the bone by drilling the
wires into the bones in the normal manner (see
appellant's specification, for a discussion on the
normal ways of inserting these wires). However,
Longfellow does not disclose that the wire is
oscillated during its insertion. [Answer, page 4;
footnote added.]
Thereafter, the examiner concludes that it would have been
obvious to modify the insertion method of Longfellow by
oscillating the fixation wires in view of the teachings of
Leuenberger.
In our view, the examiner's position is based on
speculation and unfounded assumptions. There is absolutely
2According to appellant's specification "K-wires" (i.e.,
Kirscher wires) are fixation wires which typically have two to
four cutting edges on one end thereof (see page 6, lines 7 and
8) and are traditionally inserted or drilled into bone tissue
by means of a rotary drill (see page 1, lines 8-26).
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