Appeal No. 94-3056
Application 07/812,421
and further in view of any one of Williams, Ferrari, Shen,
Doel, Kempe or Willson.
We reverse this rejection. A prima facie case of
obviousness has not been presented by the Examiner.
The combined prior art teachings do not provide a
reasonable basis for increasing the number of 11 amino acid
sequence repeats in the antifreeze polypeptide of winter
flounder to establish that the claimed polypeptides would have
been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art at
the time of the invention. The reasoning presented in the
rejection is stated at page 12 of the Examiner’s Answer, lines
11-25:
It would have been further obvious to enhance
the antifreeze properties of the protein by
adding additional repeat sequences as suggested
by Chakrabartty or by amino acid substitution
as suggested by Scott, since these references
as cited above indicate that the number of ice
contact points is the limiting factor in anti-
freeze activity. Thus, increasing the number
of ice contact points by the addition of AFP
repeat sequences (note the same conclusion was
admitted by appellants from a review of Chakra-
bartty (19) and Scott, see page 12, last para-
graph, ending on page 13 of the specification),
or adding ice contact points via amino acid
substitution, or using like amino acids
instead of the naturally occurring ones were
all suggested by the prior art to enhance AFP
7
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