Appeal No. 2000-0583
Application No. 08/955,984
claim 1 must be made from thermoplastic material but need not
be prepared, for example, using the same thermoplastic
starting material or the same expansion tension, temperature
or pressure as the claimed balloon.8
In summary, a balloon meets the requirements of claim 1
if it (1) has the same characteristics as a balloon prepared
by the method steps recited in claim 1, regardless of the
actual method by which it was prepared, and (2) has an
increased resistance to stresses or strains of any type and in
any direction relative to a reference balloon prepared by the
steps recited in claim 1, except for the drying step. With
regard to the recited method steps, we note that claim 1 does
not recite the starting material more specifically than
“thermoplastic material” and does not specify the operating
parameters of the extruding, drying or expanding steps,
including temperatures, wall thickness (of the tubing or the
balloon), moisture content, axial tension, pressure levels,
duration and the time delay, if any, between extruding and
This interpretation is consistent with appellants’ Example 3 (Table8
3), for example, wherein different tensions were applied during the expansion
step for the "comparative" (reference) balloons than for the "invention"
balloons.
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