Appeal No. 2001-0267
Application No. 08/980,352
(Fig. 8) having a removable staple cartridge and a sensing
means for automatically sensing physical properties of the
tissue on which a procedure is being conducted and/or certain
parameters of an endoscopic surgical instrument (column 1,
lines 15 through 19). As further explained by the patentee
(column 6, lines 46 through 53; column 7, lines 33 through 36;
and column 8, lines 39 through 42), if desired, the presence
of a cartridge and the presence of staples in that cartridge
may also be sensed (Figs 14 and 19).
Like the examiner, we conclude that the combined
teachings of the applied referenced would have suggested the
addition of sensors in the hand operated tool of Rider to gain
the advantage of informing a user thereof of the presence of a
clip carrier strip and/or clips, following the explicit
teaching of Hooven.
However, the above modification would not yield the now
claimed invention. As claimed, a control means performs a
detecting step in which a slider performs an operation of
feeding a belt of plate-shaped clips a predetermined number of
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