Appeal No. 1998-2826
Application No. 08/598,687
respective positions articulated by the appellant and the
examiner. Upon evaluation of all the evidence before us, it
is
our conclusion that the evidence adduced by the examiner is
insufficient to establish a prima facie case of obviousness
with respect to independent claim 3. Accordingly, we will not
sustain the examiner's rejection of claim 3, and claims 4
through 6 dependent thereon, under 35 U.S.C. § 103. Our
reasoning for this determination follows.
Chikama discloses:
an endoscope having a long flexible image guide,
such as a colon endoscope, in which a shape memory
alloy [26] is built in a flexible tube [22] in which
the image guide is inserted. When the flexible tube
is inserted in the deep portion of a complicatedly
bent organ such as the colon, the flexible tube
which is partially bent according to the bending of
the colon or the like is straightened by utilizing
the restoring property of the shape memory alloy to
straighten the correspondingly bent portion of the
colon or the like, whereby the flexible tube can
easily be inserted in the complicatedly bent portion
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