Appeal No. 1997-2373
Application No. 08/333,880
obvious over Mowery and Afeyan. The examiner’s rationale in both rejections
was similar: Cazer and Mowery teach chromatography systems and Afeyan
teaches a perfusive chromatography medium. The examiner reasoned that it
would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art to combine the
perfusive particles disclosed by Afeyan with the chromatography system of either
Cazer or Mowery, because Afeyan teaches that the perfusive matrix enhances
productivity without compromising resolution. Examiner’s Answer, pages 4 and
6.
The examiner appears to concede that Cazer “does not teach the valve
arrangement as claimed [in claim 1], i.e., mixing valve connecting the solution
reservoirs to the columns.” Examiner’s Answer, pages 3 -4. The examiner
nonetheless concluded that the claimed apparatus would have been obvious
because “it would have been obvious to the ordinarily skilled artisan at the time
the invention was made to have provided a mixing valve in the embodiment of
Cazer et al. in which multiple solutions are mixed together prior to mixing with the
sample for injection into the columns.” Id., page 5. The examiner argues that
[t]he arrangement of the valves are [sic] not patentably distinctive
features since Cazer et al. teaches that the multi-port and multi-
modal valves are arranged in a way to . . . convey pumped fluid,
sample mixed with a mobile phase or mobile phase alone, to the
columns and the detector, which function is that required by the
instant invention, and since it has been held that rearranging parts
of an invention involves only routine skill in the art. In re Japikse,
86 USPQ 70 [(CCPA 1950)].
Examiner’s Answer, page 5.
4
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007