Appeal No. 1997-2510
Application No. 07/868,539
‘other’ region is the one that was not covalently attached to X1.” We agree with
appellant.
Accordingly, we reverse the rejection of claims 1 and 3-11 under 35
U.S.C. § 112, second paragraph.
THE REJECTIONS UNDER 35 U.S.C. § 103:
The rejection of claims 1, 3 and 6-8 as obvious over Vickers, in view of Sakata,
Metzler, Uhlmann and Inouye.
Initially, we note that the examiner’s statement of the rejection (Answer,
page 7) is something less than a coherent thought. According to the examiner
(Answer, page 7) Vickers:
disclose a DNA hairpin structure where the nucleotides
making up the loop are shown in figure 3 (note the lengths of
28, 18, and 26 bases). The DNA is disclosed as targeted to
the “TAR” element where the disclosed loop contains bases
such as A, U, C, and G … and is an oligonucleotide targeted
to a viral transcription factor that inhibited gene expression
and HIV replication…. [Vickers] put the constructs into cells
and indicated that (page 3365) that [sic] the “results
demonstrate that antisense oligonucleotide targeted to the
bulge and loop regions of TAR are capable of binding and
disrupting the native TAR structure at pharmacological
reasonable concentrations …[”].
The examiner finds (id.) Sakata “disclose oligonucleotides with hairpin
loop (note the UUCG, figure 1 and the 13+ bases among others) structures
formed with a single strand of DNA (and have an unusually high Tm and thermal
stability) as do appellant’s claimed compositions and [the] compositions recited
in the [claimed] method of inhibiting viral replication.” The examiner further
explains (Answer, page 29):
16
Page: Previous 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007