Appeal No. 2006-2627 Page 23
Application No. 09/947,833
art. For clarity, I direct attention to the following documents: Sottosanti18, Hanker19 and
Snyders20. Each of these patents issued prior to the filing date of appellants’
application, each teach bone repair compositions21, each is discussed in appellants’
specification and each is of record in the instant application22. Therefore, each
document informs this record as to what a person of ordinary skill in this art, specifically
a person with experience in the formulation of bone repair compositions23, knew and
understood at the time of appellants’ claimed invention.
Each patent teaches a composition that comprises demineralized bone and
calcium sulfate. See Sottosanti, column 2, lines 24-26 (“[t]he present invention also
provides a novel composite graft material containing DFDBA24 and calcium sulfate.”);
Hanker, column 2, lines 24-25 (“demineralized freeze-dried bone can be mixed with the
plaster25 and calcium phosphate ceramic.”); and Snyders, column 3, lines 51-54 (“[y]et
18 Sottosanti, U.S. Patent No. 5,366,507, issued November 22, 1994
19 Hanker et al. (Hanker), U.S. Patent No. 4,619,655, issued October 28, 1986
20 Snyders, U.S. Patent No. 5,425,769, issued June 20, 1995
21 See Sottosanti, column 1, lines 6-13; Hanker, column 1, lines 12-13; and Snyders, column 1,
lines 10-12.
22 See Form PTO-1449, received April 3, 2002 and included, as considered by the examiner, in the Office
Action mailed July 2, 2002.
23 There is no dispute on this record that a person of ordinary skill in this art is a person with experience in
the formulation of bone graft compositions.
24 Sottosanti defines DFDBA as “[d]emineralized, freeze-dried, allogenic bone. . . .” Sottosanti, column 1,
lines 28-29.
25 According to Hanker (column 1, lines 15-17), “Plaster of Paris (PP) or equivalent forms of calcium
sulfate hemihydrate, [are] hereinafter referred to for convenience as ‘plaster’. . . .”
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