Appeal No. 2001-0870 Page 4
Application No. 08/422,381
age. The examiner rejected all of the claims as obvious in view of Chan, DiPiro,
and Goodman & Gilman.
The examiner characterizes Chan as “teach[ing] that nicotine replacement
therapy is well known as an aid in smoking cessation therapy.” Examiner’s
Answer, page 4. The examiner concedes that Chan does not teach “methods for
determining or optimizing nicotine replacement dosages based on values
corresponding to various patient characteristics,” id. at page 5, but relies on
DiPiro and Goodman & Gilman to make up this deficiency.
The secondary references teach the individualization of drug
therapy, broadly, based on factors similar to those therein [sic], is
conventional in the pharmaceutical art. See, e.g., in DiPiro et al.
page 16, Table 2.1 and Goodman [&] Gilman et al. page 43, Figure
3.1. One of ordinary skill would therefore have ample motivation to
determine nicotine replacement dosages in therapy by employing
such factors. Further, the optimization of amounts of agents to be
employed is deemed to be within the skill of the artisan.
Examiner’s Answer, page 5
Appellant argues that the examiner’s references do not teach or suggest
all of the claim limitations. See the Appeal Brief, page 10:
[N]o reference or combination thereof teaches or suggests that a
nicotine replacement dosage can be individualized and based on
particular characteristics specific to an individual patient.
Furthermore, no reference or combination thereof remotely implies
that nicotine dosage determinations for male and female patients
depend on entirely different sets of primary factors, as set forth in
claim 37.
Appellant also argues that, in addition to not teaching the limitations of the
claims, the cited reference do not provide adequate motivation to combine what
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