Appeal No. 1997-3501
Application No. 08/253,232
suggested or directed one of ordinary skill in the art to the presently claimed process or
would have provided one of ordinary skill in the art with a reasonable expectation of
success of doing so for vWF.
A general incentive does not make obvious a particular result, nor does the
existence of isolated techniques by which that particular result can be obtained. See In re
Deuel, 51 F.3d 1552, 1559, 34 USPQ2d 1210, 1216 (Fed. Cir. 1995). What is lacking
here is a suggestion, motivation or reason to be found, explicitly or implicitly, in the prior art
for using the individual steps together in the claimed purification process to obtain purified
vWF. In re O'Farrell, 853 F.2d 894, 903-04, 7 USPQ2d 1673, 1681 (Fed. Cir. 1988); In
re Rouffet, 149 F.3d 1350, 1357, 47 USPQ2d 1453, 1458 (Fed. Cir. 1998).
For example, the disclosures of Austen, Mathews, Wang and Mitra provide detailed
procedures primarily for the purification of Factor VIII:C. They do not direct one of ordinary
skill in the art to a process of purifying and isolating vWF.
The constituent factual findings for a prima facie case of obviousness are: (1) the
scope and content of the prior art; (2) the level of ordinary skill in the art; (3) the differences
between the prior art and the claimed invention. See Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S.
1, 17, 148 USPQ 459, 467 (1966).
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