Appeal No. 2002-1487 Page 10
Application No. 09/404,461
The obviousness rejection based on Trott alone
We will not sustain the rejection of dependent claims 4 and 11 to 13 under
35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over Trott for the reasons set forth above with
respect to parent claim 1. In this regard, we note that in this rejection the examiner has
not found the subject matter as a whole to have been obvious at the time the invention
was made to a person of ordinary skill in the art. Specifically, the examiner has not
presented any evidence or rationale as to why it would have been obvious at the time
the invention was made to a person of ordinary skill in the art to have modified Trott's
inner spiral 60 to have a helical cut (i.e., gap) formed therein.
The obviousness rejection based on Trott and Krause
We will not sustain the rejection of claims 1 to 13 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as
being unpatentable over Trott in view of Krause.
Krause discloses a surgical instrument 10 that includes a rigid outer member 12
within which is disposed a hollow inner member 14 having rigid proximal and distal ends
and a region 16 disposed between the rigid proximal and distal ends that is relieved to
render such region relatively flexible. The flexible region is integral with a portion of the
proximal end disposed adjacent to the flexible region. The inner member transmits
force (such as torsion) applied to its proximal end to move a cutting implement
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