Interference 102,728
established that obvious errors and appropriate corrections thereto that would have
been recognized by one skilled in the art can be corrected by an amendment to the
specification. In re Oda, 443 F.2d 1200, 1204, 170 USPQ 268, 271 (CCPA 1971);
M.P.E.P. § 2163.07. Brake explained to the examiner that a word processing, format
error occurred which shifted the two strands in the original sequence so that they were
not complementary. The ‘325 Application, Paper No. 6, p. 4; Brake Brief, Paper
No. 157, p. 63. Brake’s proposed amendment to the specification did not add or delete
data, or alter the nucleotide sequence in any way, it simply corrected the alignment of
the nucleotide sequence data already disclosed therein. The ‘325 Application, Paper
No. 6, p. 4. In our view, since Brake 1 discloses that the contested nucleotide
sequence was based on the known amino acid sequence of EGF,22 one skilled in the
art would have recognized the error and known how to correct it using a conventional
genetic dictionary to compare the nucleotide coding triplets (codons) disclosed in Brake
1 to the known EGF amino acid sequence. See Brake Reply, Paper No. 44, Johnson
Declaration, pp. 4-7; Tekamp-Olson Declaration 2, pp. 3-5, para. 6; Brake Exhibit 25.
We note Singh’s argument that due to the degeneracy of the genetic code one
cannot unambiguously determine a nucleotide sequence from an amino acid sequence
(Paper No. 30, p. 9), however, we point out that codon degeneracy is not an issue in
22 The Brake 1 specification discloses that:
A synthetic sequence for human epidermal growth factor (EGF)
based on the amino acid sequence of EGF reported by H. Gregory and B.
M. Preston[,] Int. J. Peptide Protein Res. 9, 107-118 (1977) was
prepared... [the ‘325 Application, p. 12, lines 18-21].
31
Page: Previous 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007