Appeal No. 1997-0915
Application 08/369,853
OPINION
We follow Appellants' grouping of claims (Br5-6).
Claims 1-5, 7-13, 17, 19, 20, 22, 23, 25, and 26
Appellants argue that neither Policastro nor Sasaki
discloses or suggests "an independently positionable, self
contained data acquisition pod . . . not co-located with the
portable monitor during said patient monitoring" as recited in
claim 1. Appellants do not argue the other limitations of
claim 1 and do not challenge the conclusion that it would have
been obvious to make, say, the blood pressure detector in
Policastro as a detachable module co-located with the
apparatus in view of the teachings of a detachable sensor unit
7 in Sasaki. We address only the argued data acquisition pod
limitation. See 37 CFR § 1.192(c)(8)(iv) (1995).
The Examiner states (FR7-8); see also EA13-14):
Although it is noted that Sasaki's sensor coupling
sensor, when attached, appears to be co-located with the
monitoring apparatus in fig. 1 of Sasaki, it is
respectfully submitted that Sasaki also teaches the use
of cables (15, 19) and connectors (13, 14) to attach his
sensor unit to external sensors (16, 17, 18) in such a
manner that the external devices are independently
positionable, self-contained, and not co-located with the
portable monitoring apparatus (Sasaki; col. 4,
lines 39-48 and figs. 2B-2D). One having ordinary skill
in the art at the time of the invention would have found
it obvious to utilize the above teachings of Sasaki with
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