Appeal No. 2002-1671 Page 7
Application No. 08/993,985
person of ordinary skill in the art to have modified Kawai's bioabsorbable stent to be
self-expandable as set forth in claim 56. Accordingly, the examiner has not established
a prima facie case of obviousness with respect to claim 56 since the examiner has not
found that it would have been obvious to to an artisan at the time the invention was
made to have modified Kawai's stent to arrive at the claimed invention. Accordingly,
the decision of the examiner to reject claim 56 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being
unpatentable over Kawai in view of Fontaine is reversed.
Claim 1
Claim 1 is directed to a stent-graft comprising, inter alia, (1) a bioabsorbable
structural support comprising a radially compressible and self-expandable tubular body;
and (2) a permanent graft cooperating with the structural support to provide a
coextensive portion where at least a part of the coextensive portion has a length of the
bioabsorbable structural support and a length of the permanent graft bonded together.
The appellant argues (brief, p. 16) that the above-noted bonding limitation of
claim 1 is not taught or suggested by the combined teachings of Kawai and Fontaine as
applied in the rejection before us in this appeal. We agree.2 Clearly, the examiner has
not correctly ascertained the differences between Kawai and claim 1 since Kawai does
2 The examiner did not respond to this argument in the answer.
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007