Appeal No. 2000-0673
Application No. 08/960,276
persuasive. In our view, one of ordinary skill would have
found ample suggestion to electrically deposit the collagen
coating of McNamara in Vieth's teaching that
(col. 2, lines 72 to 75):
A unique advantage of the process of the present
invention is that pre-shaped electrodes may be used,
thus enabling uniform distribution of the
immobilized enzyme-membrane complexes on irregularly
shaped supports.
Since the stent disclosed by McNamara is a helix, i.e., an
"irregularly shaped" support, this disclosed advantage of the
Vieth process would have motivated one of ordinary skill to
select that process for coating the McNamara stent. Moreover,
as the examiner notes, Vieth discloses in Example 2 the
coating of a stainless steel wire helix which, although
considerably larger than a stent, would have suggested using
the Vieth process to coat other helically-shaped objects, such
as the McNamara stent.
Appellants note that at col. 8, lines 58 to 60, Vieth
states that the coating on the helix disintegrated after four
runs. However, we do not consider that this would dissuade
one of ordinary skill from electrodepositing the coating on
the McNamara stent, given the above-discussed advantage
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