Ex Parte Carlson - Page 34


                 Appeal No.  2004-2317                                                         Page 34                   
                 Application No.  09/771,938                                                                             

                        On this record, the examiner provides no evidence that the number of                             
                 inoperative embodiments is so large that a person of ordinary skill in the art                          
                 would have to experiment unduly to practice the claimed invention.  To the                              
                 contrary, the examiner recognizes (Answer, page 40) that “[t]he prior art shows                         
                 that hundreds of nucleotide sequences encoding products that confer various                             
                 types of plant traits have been isolated at the time the instant invention was filed”;                  
                 and that “[o]ne skilled in the art can transform any of these isolated nucleotide                       
                 sequences known in the prior art into a corn plant cell, and regenerate a                               
                 transgenic plant from the transformed cell.”  Accordingly, we are not persuaded                         
                 by the examiner’s unsupported assertions.                                                               
                        For the foregoing reasons, we reverse the rejection of claims 27-30 under                        
                 the enablement provision of 35 U.S.C. § 112, first paragraph.                                           

                                                     SUMMARY                                                             
                        We reverse the rejection of claims 3, 6, 11, 14-20, and 27-30 under 35                           
                 U.S.C. § 112, second paragraph.                                                                         
                        We reverse the rejection of claims 6, 11, 24, 25 and 27-31 under the                             
                 written description provision of 35 U.S.C. § 112, first paragraph.                                      
                        We reverse the rejection of claims 27-30 under the enablement provision                          
                 of 35 U.S.C. § 112, first paragraph.                                                                    

                                                     REVERSED                                                            

                                                                          )                                              
                                       Toni R. Scheiner                  )                                              
                                       Administrative Patent Judge        )                                              





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