Appeal No. 94-2818
Application 07/834,771
construction of the claims but, as in Herz, the claims are not
so limited.
Appellants’ arguments regarding the secondary references
are also not well taken. Appellants argue either limitations
that are not found in appealed claim 1 or discuss the
references individually, instead of correctly assessing the
prior art as a whole. See In re Gorman, 933 F.2d 982, 986, 18
USPQ2d 1885, 1888 (Fed. Cir. 1991)([T]he test is whether the
teachings of the prior art, taken as a whole, would have made
obvious the claimed invention).
It should also be noted that, giving the broadest
reasonable interpretation to the language of claim 1, there is
no positive limitation in step (a) that the flexible bag
actually contains concentrated microorganisms, only that it is
capable of ?holding concentrated microorganisms?. Furthermore,
giving the broadest reasonable interpretation, step (b) of
claim 1 does not require that the bag contains the stored
microorganisms while water is used to fill the bag to form a
liquid culture medium. This step merely requires that the bag
be filled with water to form a liquid culture medium, e.g.,
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