Appeal No. 1996-1783
Application No. 08/195,025
formation and stabilization. The examiner has not established
that the references may be combined due to the nature of the
problem, i.e., the examiner has not shown that stabilization
of vesicles as taught by Tin and Popescu is the same problem
that Gaonkar is concerned with, namely, stabilization of
water/oil/water or oil/water/oil emulsions. Tin discloses
that liposomes (especially small sonicated vesicles) are
thermodynamically unstable at low temperatures and tend to
aggregate or fuse to form larger unilamellar vesicles on long-
term storage (column 1, lines 31-36). Tin teaches that this
aggregation or fusion is overcome by the storage of micellar
particles in a polymeric gel matrix formed by polysaccharides
or polypeptides (column 1, lines 53-60). Popescu teaches
sequestering liposomes in a gel matrix to provide resistance
to “clearance or degradation,” where the gel matrix is formed
from various carbohydrates (column 3, lines 45-50; column 7,
lines 27-42). Gaonkar discloses the inherent instability of
water/oil/water systems where the breakdown of the emulsion
occurs when discontinuities in the lipid phase permit the
separated aqueous phase to coalesce, especially upon standing
at low temperatures (column 1, lines 40-56). Gaonkar teaches
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