Appeal No. 1995-2723
Application 07/858,747
expression of genes which would otherwise not be expressed or which would be poorly
expressed because of the presence of INS regions in the mRNA transcript.
DISCUSSION
Grouping of the Claims:
At page 6 of the Appellants' principal brief (Principal Brief), appellants state that the
claims do not stand or fall together and state that claims 6-9 and 10-11 are separately
patentable. Appellants have not separately argued the claims within each group.
Therefore, we have separately considered the final rejection only as it applies to claim 1,
as representative of claims 1-5, claim 6, as representative of claims 6-9 and claim 10, as
representative of claims 10-11.
Claim Interpretation:
Claim 1 is directed to a method of reducing the effect of inhibitory or instability
sequences (INS) within the coding region of a mRNA wherein the inhibitory or instability
sequence results in a post-transcriptional effect. At page 2 of the specification, applicants
state that the "post-transcriptional effect" includes:
nuclear post-transcriptional processes (e.g. splicing, polyadenylation, and
transport) as well as cytoplasmic RNA degradation. All these processes
contribute to the final steady-state level of a particular transcript.
We read this claim to encompass any effect which is observed to occur following
transcription of the gene to generate the mRNA. The stability of the transcribed mRNA or
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