Appeal No. 2001-1973 Page 5
Application No. 08/734,184
2. Timmons
The examiner rejected claims 1-9 as anticipated by Timmons,1 and cited
pages 168-170 of the reference as disclosing all of the limitations of claim 1. See
the Examiner’s Answer, page 4.
We agree that Timmons anticipates claim 1. Timmons discloses a
process comprising (1) providing open containers (see page 168), (2) providing
an aqueous culture medium (seawater supplemented with nutrients, see pages
168 and 169) comprising a seed stock of microalgae (page 168), (3) exposing
the culture medium to sunlight (sentence bridging pages 168 and 169), (4)
maintaining the pH of the cultures “within 0.2 pH units of [a] setpoint” (page 169),
(5) harvesting a portion of the medium after a predetermined period (page 170:
“[A]ll the cultures were mixed . . . and five hemacyter slide counts were made.”),
and (6) adding replacement seed stock medium to the unharvested portion of the
medium (page 170: “Th[e] mixture is then used to reseed each treatment to
achieve the starting density specified.”).
The method disclosed by Timmons thus meets all the limitations of instant
claim 1. “It is well settled that a claim is anticipated if each and every limitation is
found either expressly or inherently in a single prior art reference.” Celeritas
Techs. Ltd. v. Rockwell Int’l Corp., 150 F.3d 1354, 1361, 47 USPQ2d 1516, 1522
(Fed. Cir. 1998). Claim 1 is unpatentable under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b). Claims 2-9
fall with claim 1.
1 The examiner alternatively rejected claims 1-9 as obvious in view of Timmons. Since we
conclude that the reference anticipates at least claim 1, we need not reach the alternative ground
of rejection.
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