Appeal No. 2005-1078
Application 09/681,303
a radiation source or sources provided within said housing tube, said proximal end of said
flexible backbone wire being adjacent to said radiation source or sources.
4. The flexible source wire of claim 1, wherein said radioactive source is included within a thin
walled-capsule.
7. The flexible source wire in accordance with claim 4 wherein at least one end of said capsule
is rounded.
The references relied on by the examiner are:
Suthanthiran et al. (Suthanthiran) 5,163,896 Nov. 17, 1992
Ishibe et al. (Ishibe) 5,230,348 Jul. 27, 1993
Liprie (Liprie ‘781) 5,282,781 Feb. 1, 1994
Liprie (Liprie ‘300) 5,395,300 Mar. 7, 1995
Narciso, Jr. et al. (Narciso) 5,454,794 Oct. 3, 1995
The examiner has advanced the following grounds of rejection on appeal:2
claims 1 through 6, 9 through 15, 17 through 25 and 27 through 31 stand rejected under
35 U.S.C. § 102(b) as anticipated by Liprie ‘781 (answer, pages 4-5 and 7-9);
claims 7, 8, 16 and 26 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Liprie
‘781 as applied to claims 1 through 6, 9 through 15, 17 through 25 and 27 through 31, and
further in view of either Suthanthiran or Liprie ‘300 (answer, pages 5-6 and 9-10);
claims 1 through 6, 9 through 15, 17 through 25 and 27 through 31 stand rejected under
35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as obvious over Liprie ‘781 in view of Narciso and/or Ishibe (answer, pages
6 and 10-11).
Appellant states that the appealed claims “stand or fall together” (brief, page 3). Thus,
we decide this appeal based on appealed claims 1 and 7 as representative of the grounds of
rejection. 37 CFR § 1.192(c)(7) (2003); see also 37 CFR § 41.37(c)(1)(vii) (effective September
13, 2004; 69 Fed. Reg. 49960 (August 12, 2004); 1286 Off. Gaz. Pat. Office 21 (September 7,
2004)).
We affirm.
Rather than reiterate the respective positions advanced by the examiner and appellant, we
refer to the answer and to the brief for a complete exposition thereof.
Opinion
In order to consider the examiner’s application of prior art to appealed claims 1 and 7 we
must first interpret the language thereby by giving the claim terms their broadest reasonable
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