Appeal No. 97-1782
Application 08/112,426
The appealed claims are drawn to a medical or surgical instrument and to a method for grasping
an instrument, and are reproduced in Appendix A of appellant's brief.
The references applied in the final rejection are:3
Polder 4,669,769 June 2, 1997
Wright 4,777,948 Oct. 18, 1988
Industrial Design, Page 56 (Sept. 1968)
The claims on appeal stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as follows:
1. Claims 1, 3 to 7, 14 and 15, unpatentable over Polder, optionally in view of Wright;
2. Claims 2, 8 and 13, unpatentable over Polder in view of Industrial Design, optionally in view of
Wright.
According to the examiner (answer, page 3), the rationales behind these rejections are correctly
described by appellant on pages 5 to 6 of the brief.
After fully considering the record in light of the arguments presented in the appellant's brief and
reply brief, and in the examiner's answer and supplemental answer, we conclude that the above-noted
rejections will not be sustained. We reach this conclusion even assuming, contrary to the argument in
the reply brief, that Polder constitutes analogous art.
3In the supplemental answer (paragraph 3), the examiner refers to a number of other
references of record. These references will be given no consideration since they were not positively
included in the statement of the rejection. Ex parte Raske, 28 USPQ2d 1304, 1305 (BPAI 1993).
2
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