Appeal No. 1997-2532
Application No. 08/427,569
Claims 17-33 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over
Urdea in view of Seiki and either Hogan or Ratner. Claims 34-36 stand rejected under 35
U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Urdea in view of Seiki and either Hogan or
Ratner and further in view of Stratagene. We REVERSE both rejections.
In reaching our decision in this appeal we have given careful consideration to the
appellants' specification and claims and to the respective positions articulated by the
appellants and the examiner. We make reference to the examiner's answer (Paper No.
42, mailed November 26, 1996) for the examiner's reasoning in support of the rejection
and to the appellants' brief (Paper No. 41, filed September 26, 1996) and to appellants'
3
reply brief (Paper No. 43, filed January 24, 1997) for the appellants' arguments
thereagainst.
OPINION
Urdea discloses a generic solution sandwich hybridization assay comprising
(a) contacting a sample with (i) an amplifier probe having a first segment that is
complementary to a first portion of a nucleic acid sequence of interest and a second
segment that is complementary to a oligonucleotide unit of a nucleic acid multimer and (ii)
a capture probe having a first segment that is complementary to a second, different portion
3After initially denying entry of appellants' reply brief in a communication mailed February 25, 1997
(Paper No. 44), the examiner later entered the reply brief "[i]n view of the new rules for entry of reply briefs
which went into effect December 1, 1997, which require the entry of reply briefs" (see communication
mailed December 12, 1997, Paper No. 47).
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