Appeal 2007-2314
Application 10/657,110
In addition, Appellants argue that “the Examiner appears to have
mistakenly construed the trackable change in ‘orientation,’ which is
described in Chen, as the same thing as a change in the configuration of an
internal view changing mechanism (e.g., prism)” (Reply Br. 2). In contrast,
Appellants argue that:
The tracking system described in Chen is clearly a tracking
system that simply tracks changes in the spatial position and
orientation of the endoscope itself. In other words, the
endoscope can change “position” by pivoting the scope left or
right and/or pitching the scope up or down. Similarly, the
orientation of the scope can change by rolling it about its
longitudinal axis. Chen offers no disclosure of measuring
anything other than changes in this spatial position/orientation
of the scope.
(Id. at 3.)
As discussed above, we agree with Appellants that Chen does not
describe “acquiring configuration data of an internal view changing
mechanism of [an] endoscope” and displaying representations of a
subsurface structure based on these data. However, for the reasons
discussed above, we conclude that doing so would have been obvious.
Therefore, even if the Examiner “mistakenly construed the trackable change
in ‘orientation,’ which is described in Chen, as the same thing as a change in
the configuration of an internal view changing mechanism (e.g., prism),” we
are not persuaded that the combination of Chen and Dohi does not render
claim 9 obvious.
SUMMARY
We conclude that the Examiner has set forth a prima facie case that
claim 9 would have been obvious over Chen in view of Dohi, which
9
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Next
Last modified: September 9, 2013