Appeal No. 95-4440
Application 07/841,707
pullulan which upon hydrogenation has an average mw of 5x10 ”6
(Ans.,
pp. 3-4, bridging para.); (3) Leathers’ A. pullulans strains
are “capable of producing pullulan” (Ans., p. 4, 1st full
para.); (4) Wickerham’s A. pullulans strains are “capable of
producing pullulan” (Ans., p. 4, 2nd full para.); (5) Na’s A.
pullulans strain A22 is “capable of producing unpigmented
pullulan” (Ans., p. 4, 3rd full para.); and (6) Kelly’s A.
pullulans mutants are “capable of producing pullulan” (Ans.,
p. 4, 4th full para.). Even then, appellants’ claimed A.
pullulans strains with specified characteristics are
practically impossible to compare to the A. pullulans strains
and mutants with unspecified characteristics which are in the
public domain. While the strains appellants claim and those
the prior art discloses have the common genus A. pullulans,
the prior art strains may or may not produce “substantially
non-pigmented pullulan having an M [molecular weight] of at
w
least 6 x 10 in isolatable amounts” (Claim 19). The question6
the examiner properly raised was whether or not the prior art
disclosures of strains of a common genus which (1) produce
unpigmented pullulan or pullulan having a lower quantity of
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