Appeal No. 1997-3221
Application No. 08/249,241
GROUNDS OF REJECTION
Claims 28, 43-45, and 49-52 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being
unpatentable over Heinemann in view of Puckett and Sun.
We reverse.
The rejection under 35 U.S.C. § 103:
The examiner states (Answer62, bridging paragraph, pages 7-8) that:
The isolation of a cDNA encoding the human counterpart of the
rat GluR3 subunit that was described in the Heinemann et al.
publication by probing the cDNA library of Sun et al. or Puckett et al.,
each of which was constructed from mRNA isolated from human
brain, with a nucleic acid probe encoding all or part of rat GluR3 in a
manner that was directly analogous to the method described by
Puckett et al. to facilitate the recombinant expression and
characterization of the encoded product in the absence of other
human glutamate receptor subunits for those reasons that were
expressly given by Sun et al. would have been prima facie obvious to
an artisan of ordinary skill in the art of molecular biology at the time
that the instant invention was made.
The examiner further states (Answer, bridging paragraph, pages 8-9) that
since the GluR3A and GluR3B sequences were isolated from different cDNA
libraries “they obviously correspond to allelic variations of the same protein and
appear to be functionally indistinguishable.”
Claim 28:
Appellants argue (Brief, pages 12-17) that the claimed GluR3 sequences
differ from those described by the prior art.
62 Paper No. 26, mailed February 5, 1999.
82
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