Appeal No. 1997-2368
Application 08/158,782
coming forward with evidence or argument shift to the applicant. Id. In order to meet that
burden the examiner must provide a reason, based on the prior art, or knowledge
generally available in the art as to why it would have been obvious to one of ordinary
skill in the art to arrive at the claimed invention. Ashland Oil, Inc. v. Delta Resins &
Refractories, Inc., 776 F.2d 281, 297 n.24, 227 USPQ 657, 667 n.24 (Fed. Cir. 1985).
On the record before us, the examiner has not met the initial burden of establishing
why the prior art relied on would have led one of ordinary skill in this art to arrive at the
method of treatment of the rejected claims. While urging that Rodwell describes the
generic method for chemically linking an antibody with another molecule and the
advantage or benefit for using such conjugates for in vivo delivery to an antigenic site, the
examiner acknowledges that “Rodwell does not provide a specific teaching for chemically
linking a plurality of antibodies together.” (Answer, page 4).
The examiner cites Holder as teaching the production of polyvalent antibodies
which recognize multiple epitopes associated with more than one stage of the life cycle of
a specific parasite, P. falciparum. However, the examiner acknowledges that Holder does
not describe the production of a conjugate comprising a plurality of chemically linked
antibodies as presently required by the claims on appeal. (Answer, page 5). The examiner
cites Goldenberg ('525) as describing improved methods of disease therapy using
cytotoxic agents which can be conjugated to an antibody or antibody fragment which will
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