Appeal No. 2002-2340
Application 08/886,666
The reliance by the examiner on Mori in addition to Wunsch
to reject claims 95, 96, 98, 101, 133 and 136 is noted. Because
parent independent claim 136 states that the light delivery
system is "shaped to form said instrument" at line 2 of this
claim, it appears to read upon the showing of appellants's device
106C of an apparent prior art rake retractor where the light
distribution element 760B in Figure 11 is shaped in such a manner
as to form the retractor itself. Although the examiner's
position is correct according to Wunsch's own teachings at the
top of page 4 of the final rejection that this reference does not
teach that the multiple light extracting deformities 26 can be
multiple lenses as required by claim 136, we do observe that the
prior art light conductive spatula discussed at the bottom of
column 2 beginning at line 44 of Wunsch does indicate that the
luminous head has a central part of the spatula forming a lens
and the underside portion of the spatula is provided with a notch
which permits the refraction of the light conducted to the lens
so that it is reflected downwards as well.
We are therefore unpersuaded by appellants' arguments at
page 8 of the brief of the patentability of independent claim
136. As indicated earlier, Wunsch particularly utilizes a form
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