Appeal No. 2006-1746
Application No. 10/375,678
5. Chester discloses that visual indicator 28 may be an LED which provides a
visual indication to the physician each time a current pulse is applied to the
patient (Col. 3, lines 18-24).
6. Chester further discloses that “[s]till another object of the invention is to
provide such an improved clamp-on nerve stimulator/locator which contain
means for digitally reading out the amount of current or voltage being
applied to the patient” (Col. 2, lines 7-10).
ANALYSIS (ISSUE IV)
We note at the outset that Applicants have only presented arguments with
respect to claim 13. Accordingly, we select claim 13 as representative of the
group. From the disclosure of Chester of having an LED indicator that provides
a visual indication of a current pulse (Fact 4), and the disclosure of Griffith that
a multi-color LED can be used as the visual indicator in a nerve stimulator to
identify operating mode, we agree with the Examiner (Answer 8) that an artisan
would have been motivated to replace the single color LED of Chester with a
multi-color LED as taught by Griffith.
We are not persuaded by Applicants' contention that the modification would
not have been obvious because Griffith uses different colors to correlate to
different amounts of electrical charge because Griffith is not relied upon for a
teaching of providing multi-color LEDS for indicating current pulses. Chester
teaches using an LED to indicate current pulses. In addition, from Fact 6 we
find a disclosure in Chester that the amount of current applied to a patient can
vary. Accordingly, we additionally find from this description in Chester and
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