Appeal No. 1997-3989
Application No. 08/424,067
appeal. Therefore, the rejection of the claims on appeal will be reversed. Furthermore, we
find it unnecessary to consider appellant's additional evidence of nonobviousness. Our
reasons follow.
Appellant has argued that the limitation in the preamble of claim 25, i.e., "a driver
for an absorbable bone screw", along with the functional language in subpara-graph d
directed to such a screw, gives life and meaning to the claims (See brief at page 6,
paragraph 1 and reply brief at page 3.) Contrariwise, the examiner argues on page 3 of
the answer, that the claim should be construed as merely acceptable for use on such bone
screws and as directed to a driver of general utility. In our view, the preamble language
when taken in combination with the functional language of sub- paragraph d does give the
preambular use limitation life and meaning and the article claim should be construed as
directed to a driver not of general utility, but, for the specific purpose of driving absorbable
bone screws. See Rowe v. Dror, 112 F.3d 473, 479, 42 USPQ2d 1550, 1553 (Fed. Cir.
1997).
Having dealt with the construction of the claims, we now turn to the prior art. Our
review of the prior art publication to the inventor Huene is complicated by the fact that the
figures appearing therein are several generations of reproduction removed from the
original. Thus, it is difficult for us to ascertain from the reproduced figures, the exact
structure of the distal screw contacting end of the driver. However, as represented to us,
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