Appeal No. 2004-0275
Application No. 09/09/318,186
35 U.S.C. § 103(a)
Claims 60-65, 67, 69, 71, 74 and 803 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C.
§103(a) for obviousness over Welch in view of Liu and further in view of
Weingarten. In addition, claims 60 and 77 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C.
§103(a) as being unpatentable over Welch, Liu, and Weingarten, in view of Lam.
Furthermore, claims 60-65, 67-69, 71 and 74 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. §
103(a) as being unpatentable over Welch, Liu, and Weingarten in view of Pirkle.
Claim 60 is selected as the representative claim for each rejection.
In rejecting claims under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a), the examiner bears the initial
burden of presenting a prima facie case of obviousness. See In re Rijckaert, 9
F.3d 1531, 1532, 28 USPQ2d 1955, 1956 (Fed. Cir. 1993). A prima facie case of
obviousness is established when the teachings from the prior art itself would
appear to have suggested the claimed subject matter to a person of ordinary skill
in the art. In re Bell, 991 F.2d 781, 783, 26 USPQ2d 1529, 1531 (Fed. Cir.
1993).
Claim 60 is directed to a “method for screening chiral selectors” and
includes steps of synthesizing chiral selectors onto a polymer resin, incubating
the chiral selector with an analyte, analyzing the selectors to identify which ones
selectively adsorbed which enantiomers, attaching the identified selectors onto a
support, and resolving the analyte mixture with the attached chiral selector. It is
3 As noted in the Answer, page 2, claim 80, added in an amendment after final
rejection is rejected on the same basis as claim 60.
4
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007