Interference 103,482
(RE 29-31; RE 41-43), that persons skilled in the art
immediately would have recognized that Dolle’s claims are
directed to impossible processes. Dr. Gauthier declares (RE
29: RE 41):
It is, in my expert opinion, literally impossible
to polymerize ethylene to arrive at a syndiotactic
polyethylene, an isotactic polyethylene, or a polymer
having isotactic and/or syndiotactic blocks of ethylene.
One skilled in this art would not know how to polymerize
ethylene to provide a polymer having syndiotactic and
isotactic sequences, and as indicated above, it is, in
my opinion [sic], that this is a chemical impossibility.
It is, of course, further impossible to characterize
polyethylene in terms of the Winter Equations . . . .
Dr. Gauthier further declares that it is unclear from Dolle’s
specification how to assign or apportion isotacticity and
syndiotacticity to sequences of polymers resulting from the
polymerization of internal olefins or sequences of copolymers
(RE 29-31; RE 41-43).
We find that persons having ordinary skill in the art
would have understood that the terms syndio-isoblock,
syndiotactic, and isotactic are meaningless in the limited
context of homopolymers produced by the polymerization of
ethylene, irrespective of the polymerization catalyst or
polymerization conditions. Ethylene homopolymers prima facie
cannot be syndio-isoblock polymers having molecular chains in
which syndiotactic and isotactic sequences are present.
92
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