Appeal No. 93-3623 Page 13
Application 07/629,690
made." (Id. at ¶ 11(ii)(a), emphasis added.) The best extant
design Appellant knows of is not necessarily the same thing as
the closest prior art. In the present case, the closest prior
art is a combination of the all-PTFE reactor elements with the
cylindrical/capillary designs of Urdea/Hrdina/Leaback. The
declarations do not address this combination. See In re Baxter
Travenol Labs., 952 F.2d 388, 392, 21 USPQ2d 1281, 1285 (Fed.
Cir. 1991) (Comparison must be with the closest configuration of
the prior art).
Teachings of the art taken as a whole
34. We find that cited references and the admitted prior
art, taken as a whole, would have provided motivation to a person
having ordinary skill in the art to use an all-PTFE design to
overcome any problems with seals between PTFE and non-PTFE
components.
35. We further find that the resulting self-sealing PTFE
joints would have been considered as leak-tight (Paper 1 at 2-3)
and would obviate the need for washers, collars, adhesives, etc.
C. Discrete objects
36. Claim 1 requires "a reaction chamber packed with
peptide coated discrete objects".
37. Claim 4 further requires that "the peptide coated
discrete objects with which the reaction chamber is packed
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