Appeal No. 2002-0253
Application No. 09/093,450
II. 35 U.S.C. § 103
A. The examiner has predicated his conclusion of obviousness on the
teachings of Aggarwal and the appellants’ admission on pages 13-15 and 19-25 of the
specification that the use of chimeric antibodies for therapeutic purposes was well
known in the art. Answer, p. 3.
In response, we find that the appellants do not contest the examiner’s position,
but rather they contend that they have obtained unexpected results. The appellants
rely on the teachings of the specification (Examples 4-6, pp. 49-55; Table 10, p. 51;
Table 11, p. 53; Table 13, p. 55; and Figures 4-7) which are said to demonstrate that it
was unexpected that “a combination of sub-optimal doses of cyclosporin A and anti-
TNF" antibody produced a highly significant reduction in the clinical severity of arthritis
(Example 4).” Brief, p. 10. The appellants further rely on the declaration of co-inventor,
Dr. Marc Feldman, which is said to provide additional evidence that the administration
of sub-optimal doses of cyclosporin and anti-TNF" antibody had an unexpected
synergistic ameliorative effect in the treatment of arthritis. Id. We find these arguments
unpersuasive.
As indicated above, the appellants have not challenged the examiner’s
conclusion that the claimed invention would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill
over the teachings of Aggarwal and knowledge generally available in the art. Rather,
the appellants have limited their response to a showing of unexpected results.
We agree that in response to a prima facie case of obviousness, the appellants
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