Appeal No. 2006-1031
Application No. 09/774,278
According to the appellants’ definition of “liquid nanoparticles” in the specification,
the liquid nanoparticles of the invention may have no more than 10% gas. Appellants
insist that claim 1 requires that in each step of the method the nanoparticles remain in
liquid form. Brief, page 5. For example, appellants argue that “the statement by the
Examiner … [that] ‘[t]he instant step (b)-(d) does not exclude formation of a gas within
the particles’ is simply not true. Applicants have made clear throughout the prosecution
that their particles are liquid, and do not contain gas.” Id. In addition, appellants’
Evidence Appendix, page 5, concludes that, in high intensity fields, the “backscatter
from the liquid nanoparticles was due to simple linear backscatter from a liquid sphere
and not from more esoteric processes such as phase conversion of the perfluorocarbon
liquid inside the nanoparticles.” Thus it would reasonably appear that appellants’ liquid
nanoparticles do not undergo a phase conversion to gas in high intensity ultrasonic
fields.
In contrast, the contrast agent preparation of θstensen includes both an
injectable medium having a gas dispersed therein and a composition comprising a
diffusible component capable of diffusion in vivo into said dispersed gas so as to at least
transiently increase the size thereof. Col. 2, lines 50-55. While θstensen recognizes
that fluorocarbons and perfluorocarbons under standard conditions are liquid at normal
body temperature (Column 13, lines 16-18), θstensen describes that “[a]ctivation of
growth of the dispersed gas may be induced simply by release of excess pressure or by
the heating to body temperature which will follow administration of the mixture, or it may
if desired be brought about by the preheating the mixture immediately before
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