Appeal No. 95-4441
Application No. 07/970,229
We refer to the Brief and Reply Brief and to the Answer
for a complete exposition of the opposing viewpoints expressed
by the appellants and the examiner concerning the above noted
rejections.
OPINION
For the reasons set forth below, we will sustain the
examiner’s prior art rejection of claims 13 through 15, 18
through 23, 26 and 27 but not the prior art rejection of
claims 17 and 25.
As acknowledged by the appellants and as evinced by, for
example, the Brockmann and Lavie references, hypericin was
known in the prior art to possess antiviral activity. In our
view, the compounds defined by claims 14 and 22 and by claims
15 and 23 are so similar in structure to hypericin that one
having an ordinary level of skill in the art would have
modified the latter to obtain the former based upon a
reasonable expectation of obtaining compounds which, like
hypericin, possess antiviral activity. This conclusion of
obviousness is based upon the theory that compounds similar in
structure will have similar properties as explained, for
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