Appeal No. 2001-2168
Application No. 09/083,307
directly or indirectly dependent from claim 17, claims 10-
15 and 23 are subject to the same criticism as claim 17.
Claim 21 depends from claim 9 and recites that the
device of claim 9 is an “absorbant [sic, absorbent?]
column.” Claim 9 recites that the device functions to
remove only those blood components having “a molecular
weight of 120,000 daltons or less,” that is a device having
a single cutoff of 120,000 daltons (see footnote 3 supra).
It is not clear how an absorbent column (which resolves
mixtures) can be defined as having such a single cutoff.
For the foregoing reasons, claims 10-15, 17, 21 and 23
do not define the metes and bounds of the invention with
the degree of precision required in Venezia.
With regard to the new ground of rejection of claim 21
under the first paragraph of § 112, there is no descriptive
support in the original specification, including the
original claims, or the original drawings that the device
of claim 9 is an absorbent column. As a result, the
disclosure in appellant’s application as originally filed
does not reasonably convey to the artisan that appellant
had possession at that time of the subject matter now
recited in claim 21. Thus, with regard to the subject
matter of claim 21, the disclosure as originally filed does
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