Appeal No. 2001-0628
Application No. 09/118,665
(CCPA 1982). In calling into question the enablement of the
appellant's disclosure, the examiner has the initial burden of
advancing acceptable reasoning inconsistent with enablement. Id.
The examiner has advanced related rationales for the written
description and enablement rejections, and the appellants, in
turn, have argued the two rejections as one (see pages 10 through
13 in the brief). Hence, we too shall treat the rejections
together.
The subject matter recited in the claims so rejected is
specific to the vertically extending MRI primary coil 368
schematically illustrated in Figure 43 and briefly described in
the specification on pages 37 and 38. Of particular interest is
the passage on page 37, lines 21 through 25, which states that
[a] patient may be placed in a standing or seated
position on a support 370 for imaging in the coil 368.
A ram 372 is operable to move the patient into and out
of the coil 368. Positioning fixtures, etc. are
mounted to a support member 374.
The examiner views the appellants’ specification as failing
to comply with the written description requirement with respect
to the claimed subject matter at issue because
[t]he specification fails to disclose a method of
imaging a joint in an imaging chamber while the patient
is seated or standing while gripping a portion of the
patient’s body with a cuff. Pages 37-38 and original
claim 58 provide the only disclosure of the embodiment
which images either a seated or standing patient. The
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