Appeal No. 1999-1245
Application No. 08/245,282
In rejecting claims under 35 U.S.C. § 103, the examiner bears the initial burden
of presenting a prima facie case of obviousness. See In re Rijckaert, 9 F.3d 1531,
1532, 28 USPQ2d 1955, 1956 (Fed. Cir. 1993). It is well-established that the
conclusion that the claimed subject matter is prima facie obvious must be supported by
evidence, as shown by some objective teaching in the prior art or by knowledge
generally available to one of ordinary skill in the art that would have led that individual to
combine the relevant teachings of the references to arrive at the claimed invention.
See In re Fine, 837 F.2d 1071, 1074, 5 USPQ2d 1596, 1598 (Fed. Cir. 1988). With
this as background, we analyze the prior art applied by the examiner in the rejection of
the claims on appeal.
According to the examiner, Ward 1993 discloses that the ligation of the CD28
receptor by B7 results in modulation of the D-3 phosphoinositides and states that the
data suggest that activation of PI 3-kinase and subsequent D-3 phosphoinositides
metabolism may be important signaling events in CD28 mediated costimulation and T
cell activation following ligation by B7. Answer, page 8. Ward 1993 further discloses
that the CD28 receptor modulates the cellular activity of PI-3 kinase (the enzyme
responsible for D-3 phosphoinositides formation) and therefore D-3 phosphoinositides
(see page 2573); ?that the PI 3-kinase is a protein tyrosine kinase substrate and it is
proposed that this tyrosine phosphorylation may regulate the activity of the catalytic
13
Page: Previous 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007