Appeal No. 1999-2777
Application No. 08/985,835
penis," or which is capable of any such "immediate surrounding
engagement with the urethra of the penis." It follows from
these determinations that the apparatus of Block also does not
anticipate the external catheter as further defined in
appellant's dependent claims 7 and 15. Accordingly, the
examiner's rejection of claims 5, 7, 13 and 15 under 35 U.S.C.
§ 102(e) based on Block will not be sustained.
We next consider the examiner's rejection of claims 8, 11
and 16 under § 103 as being unpatentable over Block. Even if
it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art
to
make the flow tube (28) of Block of polyvinyl chloride, as is
urged by the examiner, the external catheter of claim 8, which
depends from claim 5, and the external catheter of claim 16,
which depends from claim 13, would still have been unobvious
given our determinations with regard to the respective
independent claims 5 and 13. As for claim 11, this claim
depends from independent claim 9, which was not rejected by
the examiner based on Block alone. However, we note that the
subject matter defined in claim 11, via its dependency from
10
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