Appeal No. 97-1192
Application 08/385,290
Claims 1, 3 and 7 through 10 stand rejected under 35
U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over Lyng, and claims 4 and
6 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable
over Lyng in view of Kimura.
Reference is made to the appellants’ brief (Paper No. 20)
and to the examiner’s answer (Paper No. 21) for the respective
positions of the appellants and the examiner with regard to
the merits of these rejections.
Lyng discloses a collagen fabric/film laminate that can
be used as a prosthesis in reparative surgery. In Lyng’s
words,
an improved prosthesis can be constructed using as a
framework or support a collagen fabric woven,
knitted, crocheted or braided of collagen strands.
The collagen strands may be tanned either prior to
manufacture of the fabric or subsequent thereto. In
the prosthesis of the present invention the
interstices between the collagen strands are filled
and rendered bloodtight by tanned collagen fibrils,
which form a sheet of film that is laminated to at
least one surface of the fabric.
It is an advantage of the prosthetic material of
the present invention that it has a high tensile
strength and is somewhat elastic when wet. The
fabric layer of the laminate contributes good suture
holding properties and the collagen fibril layer of
the laminate provides a semi-permeable microbial
barrier that is non-adhesiogenic. The prosthesis of
the present invention is slowly absorbed with
concomitant replacement by autologous fibrous tissue
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