Appeal No. 2002-2249
Application 09/340,441
in view of Loh.1 We dismiss the appeal with respect to pending claims 6 and 9 because these
claims are not included in any ground of rejection advanced in the answer or maintained in the
final rejection mailed May 21, 2001 (Paper No. 7).2 We refer to the examiner’s answer and to
appellants’ brief for a complete exposition of the opposing views of the parties.
Appellants state in their brief (page 8) that the appealed claims “are grouped together for
purposes of this appeal.” Thus, we decide this appeal based on appealed claims 1, 5 and 15 as
respectively representative of the three grounds of rejection. 37 CFR § 1.192(c)(7) (2002).
In order to review the grounds of rejection advanced on appeal with respect to appealed
claims 1, 4, 7, 8, 12, 16 and 17, we first find that, when considered in light of the written
description in the specification as interpreted by one of ordinary skill in this art, see, e.g., In re
Hyatt, 211 F.3d 1367, 1372, 54 USPQ2d 1664, 1667 (Fed. Cir. 2000); In re Morris, 127 F.3d
1048, 1054-55, 44 USPQ2d 1023, 1027 (Fed. Cir. 1997), In re Zletz, 893 F.2d 319, 321-22,
13 USPQ2d 1320, 1322 (Fed. Cir. 1989), the plain language of appealed claim 1 specifies a
method for coating a surface of an implantable device comprising at least the steps of plasma
pretreating at least one surface of the device with an inert gas, “providing the implantable device
to a plasma chamber,” and in a single coating step, plasma treating the at least one surface with a
single reactant monomer while creating a glow discharge of the monomer by “using a power of
about 30 watts to about 100 watts for a time period of about 10 minutes or less.” The transitional
term “comprising” opens the claim to include methods which contain additional steps and
conditions, such as the application of additional coatings to the coated surface by glow discharge
polymerization, chemical vapor deposition or other methods. See In re Baxter, 656 F.2d 679,
686-87, 210 USPQ 795, 802-03 (CCPA 1981) (“As long as one of the monomers in the reaction
is propylene, any other monomer may be present, because the term ‘comprises’ permits the
inclusion of other steps, elements, or materials.”).
We interpret the last clause of the claim to require that in the single coating step, the glow
discharge is created by using the specified power for the specified period of time. In other words,
and contrary to appellants’ arguments in the brief, the specified period of time is the time that the
1 Answer, pages 3-8.
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