Appeal No. 2006-2702 Page 5
Application No. 09/881,234
Obviousness:
Claims 1, 4, 6-13, and 18-23 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as
being unpatentable over the combination of Smith, Altschul and Reed.
The examiner finds (Answer, page 4), Smith teaches “an integrated set of
World Wide Web pages that organize nucleic acid sequence searches and
analyses available by function and provide a single entry for related searches . . .
which represents a ‘system’1 . . . .” According to the examiner (Answer, bridging
paragraph, pages 4-5), “[t]his system provides a method of performing different
searches for a given query sequence (query dataset N) with various sequence
databases (i.e. BLAST database which represents subject dataset M) . . . which
represents a method of comparing datasets. In this regard, the examiner finds
(Answer, page 5), Smith “describe a sequence input field for nucleic acid
searches . . . which is well known in the art to be divided into nucleotides (data
elements).” According to the examiner (id.), “[t]he presence of an input field
suggests that there is a size limitation with a specified range, which is necessarily
more than zero but less than infinity.”
In addition, the examiner finds that Smith teaches “BLAST nucleic
acid sequence searches” of an EST (expressed sequence tag) database.
According to the examiner (id.), “[t]his EST[ ]2 . . . database subset represents a
1 According to the examiner the online version of the Merriam-Webster dictionary
(www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=system), defines the term “system” “as an
integrating group of items forming a unified whole as well as an organization forming a network
especially for distributing something sewing a common purpose.”
2 According to the examiner (Answer, page 5), the online “Genome Glossary”
(www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/human_Genome/glossary/glossary_e.shtml), defines the term
“EST” “as a short (size) strand of DNA that is part of a cDNA molecule.”
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