Appeal No. 1999-0959
Application No. 08/415,166
The instant application claims benefit under 35 U.S.C. § 120 to a series of
earlier applications dating back to October 5, 1984. One of these earlier
applications (serial number 07/127,561) was the subject of a previous appeal to
this board (appeal number 90-2287, decided June 18, 1991). In that case, the
claims were rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as obvious over the same Schwinn
‘187 and Schwinn ‘603 patents that form the basis of the § 103 rejection now on
appeal. The Schwinn patents disclose processes similar to the one now claimed,
but the Schwinn ‘187 process does not use calcium and the Schwinn ‘603
process does not use a chelating agent. The rejection was affirmed on the basis
that a person of ordinary skill in the art would have been led to combine the
reagents used in the two processes, with a reasonable expectation of success, to
heat-stabilize a solution containing clotting factors II, VII, IX and X.
Appellants amended the claims to add the limitations that the calcium ions
and chelating agent are present at concentrations of 1-30 mM and 1-7 mM,
respectively. The examiner maintained the § 103 rejection and imposed an
additional rejection based on lack of an adequate written description. This
appeal followed.
Discussion
1. The written description rejection
The claims are directed to a method of inactivating viruses in a
preparation of blood coagulation factors, comprising heating the preparation in
the presence of, inter alia, 1-30 mM calcium ions and 1-7 mM chelating agent.
3
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