Appeal No. 93-3369
Application 07/344,179
striving for in Liotta. The Examiner provides no reason why such
a separation would be undertaken by one of ordinary skill in the
art.
With respect to the claim requirement that the column have a
discharge point which is proximate to the solid support contained
in the sleeve, we note that the hybridization procedure taught by
Diamond involves an incubation time of between 15 minutes and
2 hours for the test material and the DNA in the sample to
complete the reaction. See column 14, lines 30-43 of Diamond. A
device with an open discharge end as claimed herein would not be
conducive to such reaction times. The separations mentioned by
Diamond at column 14, lines 53-63 do not use a flow-through
column with both a discharge end and an open end as required by
the claims at issue. Diamond also contemplates determining
displaced labeled polynucleotide without any separation of the
solid and liquid phases. See column 15, lines 13-36 of Diamond.
The evidence presented to date does not establish the obviousness
of this difference in tube design between the claimed device and
the reaction tube of Diamond. We note that the devices taught by
Diekmann and Graas have such discharge points in the columns but
such are not proximate to a solid support, which provision has
been discussed, supra.
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