Appeal No. 2001-1472
Application 08/772,878
needle tip [of Brumbach] to increase the probe’s effectiveness at
breaking up the deposits” (final rejection, page 3).
Kühne is relied upon by the examiner as disclosing that a
tip for a lithotritor probe can be a metal insert, while
Wuchinich is relied upon for a teaching that it was known to
provide the tip of a lithotritor probe with a constriction
relative to the proximal end of the lithotritor needle. From2
these teachings the examiner concludes that it would have been an
“obvious design choice” to provide a metal tip insert to
Brumbach’s lithotritor probe and to allow for the tip to be a
harder material than the probe, and to have formed Brumbach’s
needle with a smaller bored tip to prevent matter from blocking
or clogging the tube when suction is applied.
Appellant’s arguments in the brief appear to be primarily
directed to the examiner’s attempted combination of Manna and
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007