Appeal No. 96-0676
Application 07/963,165
would have been prima facie obvious to one of ordinary skill
in the art over the applied references. See id. The court
stated that Lunsford’s evidence of unexpected results was
“sufficient to rebut the obviousness of the claimed compounds
over the prior art.” Lunsford, 327 F.2d at 528, 140 USPQ at
427.
In the present case, unlike Lunsford, the examiner relies
only upon homology and not upon any evidence of the
equivalence, in pharmaceutical compounds, of chromans, which
have a six-membered oxygen-containing ring, and benzofurans,
which have a five-membered oxygen-containing ring. Hence,
Lunsford does not adequately support the examiner’s position.
For the above reasons, we find that the examiner has not
set forth a factual basis which is sufficient to support a
conclusion
of obviousness of the invention recited in any of appellants’
claims. We therefore reverse the rejection under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103.
Since no prima facie case of obviousness has been
established, we need not address the experimental results in
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