Appeal No. 2004-0386 Page 2 Application No. 09/733,016 obscure, solitary occurrence that would go unnoticed by those skilled in the art.” Id. at 1131, 72 USPQ2d at 1043. The court also stated that the record did not establish that “even if the interested public would readily know of the foreign sales, those sales enabled one of ordinary skill in the art to reproduce the claimed plants without undue experimentation.” Id. Thus, the court vacated the Board’s decision and remanded the case for “further factual findings relating to the accessibility of the foreign sales of the claimed plants and the reproducibility of the claimed plants from the plants that were sold.” Id. In this case, the examiner is relying upon applicant’s admission that the claimed plant “was sold outside the United States on or about July 1, 1998" as evidence that QZ PBR 980521, PL PBR PBO 0050, CZ PBR OPPH 06594, and ZA PBR 02603 are enabled. Examiner’s Answer, pages 4-7. However, there is no evidence whether the sales were of the type that would be noticed by those of skill in the art. Nor has the other issue raised by the Federal Circuit in Elsner, whether the sales would enable one skilled in the art to reproduce the claimed plant without undue experimentation, been addressed. Accordingly, we vacate the examiner’s rejection and remand the case to the examiner to determine whether the sales of the claimed plant (1) were “an obscure,Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 NextLast modified: November 3, 2007