Appeal No. 2006-0429 Page 5
Application No. 10/348,399
[Parkinson’s disease], stroke, Huntington’s chorea or traumatic brain injury.” Page 1,
lines 23-26.
The PDR Zoloft® entry teaches that Zoloft® is a trade name for sertraline
hydrochloride (page 2051, left-hand column, under “Description”), that it is a “selective
serotonin reuptake inhibitor” (id., middle column, under “Warnings”) and that it is useful
in treating depression (id., middle column, under “Indications and usage”).
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art at the time the
invention was made to combine the 4,5-difluoro-10-aza-tricyclo [6.3.1.02,7] dodeca-
2(7),3,5,-triene hydrochloride disclosed by Coe with the serotonin reuptake inhibiting
antidepressant sertraline hydrochloride, because Coe teaches that the combination is
useful for treating the cognitive decline and depression associated with, for example,
Alzheimer’s disease.
A pharmaceutical composition comprising 4,5-difluoro-10-aza-tricyclo [6.3.1.02,7]
dodeca-2(7),3,5,-triene hydrochloride and sertraline hydrochloride meets all the
limitations of claims 1-3, 6, and 7. The preamble of claim 1 does not distinguish the
claimed composition from the one made obvious by the prior art because it is merely a
statement of intended use. See Rowe v. Dror, 112 F.3d 473, 478, 42 USPQ2d 1550,
1553 (Fed. Cir. 1997) (“Where . . . a patentee defines a structurally complete invention
in the claim body and uses the preamble only to state a purpose or intended use for the
invention, the preamble is not a claim limitation.”).
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