Appeal 2006-3116
Application 10/809,140
providing a prepolymer composition that will form a hydrogel when
brought into contact with a gelation initiator;
contacting the prepolymer with the gelation initiator in the gelation
chamber so that it forms a hydrogel in the gelation chamber; and
extruding the hydrogel from the delivery device as a hydrogel string.
The references relied on by the Examiner are:1
Tanabe US 5,443,454 Aug. 22, 1995
Sawhney US 6,152.943 Nov. 28, 2000
The Examiner has rejected appealed claims 1 through 8 under 35
U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Sawhney in view of Tanabe
(Answer 3-4).
Appellants state that “[t]he claims stand or fall together” (Br. 2).
Thus, we decide this appeal based on representative appealed claim 1.
37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(1)(vii) (2005).
We affirm.
We refer to the Answer and to the Brief for a complete exposition of
the positions advanced by the Examiner and Appellants.
OPINION
We have carefully reviewed the record on this appeal and based
thereon agree with the supported position advanced by the Examiner that,
prima facie, the claimed method for forming a hydrogel string encompassed
by appealed claim 1 would have been obvious over the combined teachings
of Sawhney and Tanabe to one of ordinary skill in this art at the time the
1 The Examiner cites as evidence relied upon a text and a dictionary citation
with respect to arguments advanced by Appellants that are not included in
the sole ground of rejection (Answer 2, 3, and 5). Consideration of these
documents is not necessary to our decision.
2
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007