Appeal No. 2001-1939 Page 11
Application No. 09/072,605
disclosure of each for what it fairly teaches one of ordinary skill in the art, including not
only the specific teachings, but also the inferences which one of ordinary skill in the art
would reasonably have been expected to draw therefrom. See In re Boe, 355 F.2d
961, 965, 148 USPQ 507, 510 (CCPA 1966) and In re Preda, 401 F.2d 825, 826,
159 USPQ 342, 344 (CCPA 1968).
The Rejections On The Basis Of Klein And Sawyer
The first of these rejections is that, as an alternative to the rejection of being
anticipated by Klein, claims 14, 18, 19 and 21 are unpatentable over Klein in view of
Sawyer. We have discussed Klein above, the result being that we agreed with the
examiner that these claims were anticipated by Klein (the appellant argued the separate
patentability only of dependent claim 18). On the basis that anticipation is the epitome
of obviousness (In re Fracalossi, 681 F.2d 792, 794, 215 USPQ 569, 571 (CCPA 1982),
the Section 103 rejection of claims 14, 18, 19 and 21 also can be sustained, with
Sawyer being considered to be merely confirmatory of the position we took in Klein
regarding “streamlined).” In this regard, Sawyer seeks to reduce turbulent flow through
a stent, and does so by providing the inner surface of the stent with an “airfoil”
configuration (column 4, lines 2-13; column 5, line 17) which, as shown in Figure 2,
includes rounding corners of the segments that comprise the stent, a result that also is
accomplished by practicing the Klein abrading process.
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