Appeal No. 2001-1472
Application 08/772,878
(final rejection, page 3) that doing so would “increase the
[lithotritor] probe’s effectiveness at breaking up the [calculi]
deposits.”
Accordingly, we conclude that the examiner’s attempted
combination of Brumbach and Manna is unsupported by the evidence
of record and therefore improper.
As a further point, we also fail to see why one of ordinary
skill in the art would have been led to combine a tip with a
constriction at the distal end as in Wuchinich (Figs. 25-26) with
the probe of Brumbach, wherein the desire is to increase the area
at the distal end of the probe for permitting aspiration of
fluids and debris away from the surgical site by providing an
opening of enlarged size (slits) to avoid clogging of the tip
when the tip penetrates into a calculi deposit.
Since we consider that the modification of Brumbach’s
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