Appeal No. 2002-0311 Page 7
Application No. 09/030,241
the catheter in the organ that is the object of the procedure at a single selected point in
the cycle. On the basis of this suggestion, it is our view that the artisan would have
found it obvious to replace the sampling system disclosed in Darrow, in which the lungs
are the object of the procedure, with a system in which a single selected point is
sampled during each respiratory cycle.
Thus, it is our conclusion that the combined teachings of Darrow and Ben-Haim
establish a prima facie case of obviousness with regard to the subject matter recited in
claim 1, and we will sustain the rejection. Since the appellant has chosen to group
dependent claims 2-7 and 11-16 with claim 1, the rejection of these claims also is
sustained.
We have carefully considered the appellant’s arguments, but they have not
persuaded us that the decision of the examiner was in error. In particular, we do not
agree with the appellant that an artisan seeking to improve upon Darrow’s respiratory
locating system would have ignored Ben-Haim’s method of locating a probe in the heart
and focused only on the disclosed method for locating the reference catheters because
they were the ones in the respiratory system. Nor do we agree that to select this
method is to pick and choose only the parts needed to support a given position to the
exclusion of the other parts of the reference. Ben-Haim explicitly suggests that the
principle of sampling movement at a single fiducial point can be applied to other organs,
and it is our view that one of ordinary skill in the art would have recognized that it also
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