Appeal No. 2001-1909 Page 5
Application No. 09/016,786
Claims 50 and 59 of the preliminary amendment were further amended (see
paper no. 5) to change, most notably, the administration of the composition from
the original “substantially continuous 24-hour basis” to the current administration
“at night.” The dependency of claim 56 was also changed from claim 52 to claim
50. Appellants (paper no. 5, p. 3) have stated that the basis for these changes
can be found in the specification at page 10, lines 11-23, reproduced supra.
Remaining claims 51-55, 57-58 and 60-61 remain unchanged.
Claims 50 is illustrative of the claims on appeal. It is directed to a process
for “optimizing the regeneration, maintenance or repair of nerve tissue that
occurs naturally during sleep in a human” involving administering a composition
containing certain B-complex vitamins to a human. Claim 50 has two salient
features:
1) the composition to be administered is one “consisting essentially of at
least one water soluble B complex vitamin” independently selected from the
group consisting of vitamins B (folic acid), B1 (thiamine), B2 (riboflavin), B3
(niacinamide), B55 (pantothenic acid), B6 (pyridoxine), and B12; and,
2) the “administration” takes place “at night.”
a method of improving the regeneration of nerve tissue, call for administering at least one
pharmaceutically-acceptable B complex vitamin “on a substantially continuous 24-hour basis.”
According to the dependent claims, the continuous 24-hour administration can be accomplished
by a controlled release dosage (claim 33) that is administered once every 24 hours (claim 34) or
the total dosage can be administered in portions over a 24-hour period (claim 35) by administering
a controlled dosage twice every 24 hours (claim 36). The remaining claims are directed to the
types of vitamins and agents (claims 32 and 40) and dosage forms (claims 37-39) that can be
administered.
5 There is a misspelling in claim 50. The claim as written specifies “Pantothenic Acid (Vitamin B3),
In fact, pantothenic acid is another name for vitamin B5. This should be corrected.
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