Patent Office Action Success

Overcoming Section 112 and Section 103 Rejections in a Medical Device Patent Application

ZYL Law Firm helped obtain allowance for U.S. Patent Application No. 17/616,694 after a complex non-final Office Action involving claim clarity, structural claim architecture, and obviousness over multiple references.

Application No. 17/616,694 Notice of Allowance: May 1, 2026 USPTO Public Record
This case study is based on public USPTO records and generalized attorney work-product descriptions. Client identity, product names, and confidential business context are intentionally omitted.

Challenge

The application related to a peripheral vascular stent. The USPTO issued a non-final Office Action dated July 18, 2025, raising Section 112(b) indefiniteness issues and Section 103 obviousness rejections over Kariniemi in view of Cheng.

The core difficulty was not only to respond to prior art, but also to make the claim structure precise enough for U.S. examination while preserving commercially meaningful protection for the stent design.

112(b)Claim clarity and antecedent-basis issues addressed
103Obviousness rejection over combined references overcome
AllowedClaims 1, 3, 5, 8-19, and 23-25

Strategy

  • Rebuilt the independent claim around concrete structural limitations rather than broad functional language.
  • Focused the argument on a stent architecture using sinusoidal rings connected solely by a membrane, without metal connections between adjacent rings.
  • Clarified the claimed opening pattern and staggered ring arrangement so that the examiner could evaluate the invention against the cited references on specific structural terms.
  • Handled the evidentiary record carefully after the examiner considered, but did not find sufficient, a Rule 1.132 declaration.

Result

The USPTO issued a Notice of Allowance on May 1, 2026. The examiner’s reasons for allowance recognized that the prior art did not teach or render obvious the claimed membrane-only connection structure, opening pattern, and staggered sinusoidal ring arrangement in combination with the other claim elements.