Appeal No. 2002-0910 Page 6
Application No. 09/229,855
from the wound to contact the wound for causing healing thereof. As pointed out by the
examiner, Fox discloses, in the background of the invention, that “[i]n addition to drug
delivery, another broad application area for ultrasonics is in improved wound healing,
because it has been well established that ultrasound by itself can speed up the healing
process in open wounds” (column 1, lines 30-33). Fox, however, makes no further
mention of wound healing in the patent disclosure. Rather, Fox specifically states that
his invention relates to bandage assemblies “for phonophoresis of medicaments”
(column 1, lines 44-45) and that an object of the invention is “to provide a novel
bandage assembly using piezoelectric polymers for percutaneous administration of
medicaments” (column 1, lines 66-68). Fox does not expressly teach the use of his
piezoelectric bandage assembly for wound healing or teach placement of his bandage
substantially adjacent a wound, as called for in claim 8.
Anticipation is established only when a single prior art reference discloses,
expressly or under the principles of inherency, each and every element of a claimed
invention. RCA Corp. v. Applied Digital Data Sys., Inc., 730 F.2d 1440, 1444, 221
USPQ 385, 388 (Fed. Cir. 1984). In other words, there must be no difference between
the claimed invention and the reference disclosure, as viewed by a person of ordinary
skill in the field of the invention. Scripps Clinic & Research Found. v. Genentech Inc.,
927 F.2d 1565, 1576, 18 USPQ2d 1001, 1010 (Fed. Cir. 1991). In that Fox lacks a
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