Appeal No. 2006-2053
Application No. 10/196,109
BACKGROUND
The appellants’ invention relates to a medical instrument for dissecting
tissue in the human or animal body (specification, p. 1) and has as its primary
objective the provision of a force transmission element therein that is flexible
enough to follow the path of a bent shaft and yet capable of transmitting a force
from at least one movable grip to at least one movable tool. A copy of the claims
under appeal is set forth in the appendix to the appellants’ brief.
The examiner relies upon the following as evidence of unpatentability:
Chin US 5,582,618 Dec. 10, 1996
Recuset US 5,741,286 Apr. 21, 1998
The rejections of claims 1-5, 9 and 33 under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b) as being
anticipated by Recuset and claims 10-12 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being
unpatentable over Recuset in view of Chin are before us for review in this appeal.
Rather than reiterate in their entirety the conflicting viewpoints advanced by
the examiner and the appellants regarding this appeal, we make reference to the
examiner's answer (mailed June 1, 2005) for the examiner's complete reasoning in
support of the rejections and to the appellants’ brief (filed March 1, 2004) and
reply brief (filed July 14, 2005) for the appellants’ arguments thereagainst.
OPINION
In reaching our decision in this appeal, we have given careful consideration
to the appellants’ specification and claims, to the applied prior art, and to the
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