Detailed Explanation Not The Same As A New Ground For Rejection

In Re Adler

Addressing patentability of claims of an application, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld a decision by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences (Board), finding that the Board did not err in rejecting all of the pending claims as obvious and did not rely on new grounds for rejection.  In Re Adler, Case No. 12-1610 (Fed. Cir., July 18, 2013) (Wallach, J.).

This case arose from an appeal from the decision of the Board affirming the examiner's final rejection of all pending claims of an application as obvious over several prior art references including Meron and Hirata.  The application was directed to a system including a swallowable capsule having an in-vivo imaging device for detecting blood within a body lumen.  The Meron reference disclosed a capsule that moves through the gastrointestinal tract in order to generate a map of the tract, but does not specifically disclose a method of