Appeal No. 2003-0890 Page 7
Application No. 09/706,683
The examiner relies upon Cliffe for its description of compounds similar to those
of claim 1 on appeal and those described in Abou-Gharbia. Importantly, the Cliffe
compounds may have the corresponding ethyl bridging moiety substituted by phenyl.
See compounds of formula I of Cliffe where n = 1, R2 is hydrogen and R3 is an aryl
radical. The compounds described in Cliffe also bind to 5-HT1A receptors. Id., column
7, lines 28-44. The compounds of Cliffe may also be carboxamides as are the
compounds of claims 1-3 ( X = -NR4COR6).
The examiner has concluded that it would have been obvious to one of ordinary
skill in the art to form compounds that are structurally similar to those described in
Abou-Gharbia differing in that the ethyl bridging moiety of the compounds of Abou-
Gharbia are substituted by phenyl as described in Cliffe. Examiner's Answer, page 8.
The examiner reasons that one would expect those compounds to also exhibit the
common activity as being a serotonin antagonist, i.e., bind to 5-HT1A receptor. We
agree.
As explained in In re Payne, 606 F.2d 303, 313, 203 USPQ 245, 254 (CCPA
1979), "[a]n obviousness rejection based on similarity in chemical structure and function
entails the motivation of one skilled in the art to make the compound, in the expectation
that compounds similar in structure will have similar properties" (citations omitted).
Here, the applied prior art establishes that one of ordinary skill in the art would have
reasonably expected the compounds of Abou-Gharbia having the ethyl bridging moiety
modified by a phenyl group would continue to exhibit the property of binding to the 5-
HT1A receptor. This is seen from the Cliffe reference which describes compounds
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