Appeal No. 2003-1725
Application No. 09/357,645 Page 12
thereto along at least one direction while in a first
configuration. In a second configuration, the occluding member
is required to be compliant with respect to those forces. As
acknowledged by appellants at page 9 of the supplemental brief,
“[t]he ‘forces’ referred to in the claim can be any force that
may be applied to the occluding member, from essentially any
source.”
The examiner has determined that Payne discloses an occluder
for occluding a collapsible tube that includes a spring plate (28
or 29) that corresponds to appellants’ occluding member and an
inflatable bladder (19 or 20) that corresponds to appellants’
force actuator as recited in representative claim 1. In this
regard, we note that in a first configuration as depicted in
figure 1 of Payne, an occluding member, such as spring plate (29)
of Payne, includes a portion that runs substantially parallel
with reinforcing member (26) and includes an opening for nozzle
(22) therein. Based on that configuration and construction, the
spring plate (29) of Payne would possess the property of being
essentially non-compliant to a force applied in the direction
downwardly parallel to and directly against the upper end of the
portion of the spring plate that runs substantially parallel with
reinforcing member (26) at the location that includes an opening
Page: Previous 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007