Appeal No. 2005-0192 Page 4
Application No. 09/809,021
activity as stabilizer.” The examiner rejected some of the claims as anticipated and all
of the claims as obvious in view of the prior art.
1. Anticipation
The examiner rejected claims 18, 35, and 37 as anticipated by either Allary or
Lorne, stating the rejection as follows:
The references each teach that thrombin is eluted off a benzamidine-
Sepharose column. Thrombin and benzamidin[e] would be together in the
eluate. Since they elute using benzamidine in a competitive elution then a
complex of thrombin-benzamidine as in the present claims would have
been formed.
Examiner’s Answer, page 4.
We agree with the examiner that the experiments described by either Allary or
Lorne appear to result in a composition meeting all of the limitations of instant claim 18.
Since the references both seem to describe the same experimental procedures, we will
limit our discussion to Lorne. Lorne discloses purification of thrombin by affinity
chromatography. See pages 5-7.2 Benzamidine was immobilized on dextran-coated
silica beads (Spherodex) and placed inside a column. Page 5. Samples containing
thrombin were then injected into the column (id.) and the thrombin was allowed to
adsorb onto the immobilized benzamidine (page 6). After the column was washed with
buffer to eliminate nonadsorbed proteins, the thrombin was eluted from the column
using, in one experiment, a solution comprising 15 mM benzamidine. Page 7, lines 5-6.
2 Our citations to Lorne refer to the English-language translation, of record. We note that the examiner’s
statement of the rejection referred only to “Allary et al. (abstract) or Lorne et al. (abstract).” Examiner’s
Answer, page 4. However, as Appellants noted, the examiner made of record full-text translations of the
Allary and Lorne references at the time the Examiner’s Answer was mailed. Reply Brief, page 2. We also
note that Appellants apparently had access to their own full-text translations prior to writing the Appeal
Brief, since partial translations were included in the brief and Appellants offered to provide the full-text
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007