Appeal No. 2004-1505 Page 7
Application No. 09/016,743
chimeric molecule retaining its binding activity. Viewing the two references together, it
is seen that a person of ordinary skill in the art would have understood at the time of the
present invention that an alternative to the embodiment described in Hölzer would be to
couple the chemokine, e.g., IL-8, to the N-terminus of the complete antibody. In so
doing, one would remove any concern of abrogating the biological properties of IL-8
because its N-terminus would not be affected. In the event that such a construct would
raise a question as to whether the binding ability of the complete antibody would be
affected, such concerns are allayed by Huston’s disclosure that effector proteins can be
bound to the N-terminus of Fv antibody fragments with the resulting chimeric molecule
retaining its antibody binding property.
Appellants rely upon the declaration of Dr. Seung-Uon Shin filed under 37 CFR
§ 1.132 in rebuttal of the obviousness rejection of claim 1. The premise of Dr. Shin’s
declaration is that “there are significant differences with regard to the avidity, half-life,
and chemokine carriage which would cause scientists skilled in the field of antibody
cancer therapeutics to avoid adapting single chain Fv analog technology to whole
antibody cancer therapeutics.” Shin declaration, para. 4.
Dr. Shin relies upon various documents in the declaration. However, we do not
find copies of the relied upon documents in the Image File Wrapper (IFW).
Furthermore, some of the documents relied upon by Dr. Shin are stated to have
publication dates subsequent to the filing date of this application. The relevance that
such documents would have in determining what would have been obvious to a person
of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the present invention is not apparent. Be that as
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