Appeal 2006-3373
Application 09/919,504
13, 16-18, 20-22, 28-30, and 34-36 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a)
as being unpatentable over Kabanov.3
We affirm.
DISCUSSION
The statement of the rejections over the prior art maintained by the
Examiner can be found at pages 4-9 of the Examiner’s Answer.
Appellants do not argue the merits of the prior art rejections. Rather,
Appellants argue “that all of the pending claims of the present application
are fully entitled to a priority date of at least October 15, 1993, which
renders Lemieux, Emanuele, and Kabanov invalid as §102(b) or §103(a)
references.” (Br. 14.) Appellants therefore concede the merits of the
rejection, and are only arguing that the references replied upon are not prior
art. Thus, we focus our analysis on whether the claims on appeal are
supported by the 08/138,271 Application, which has a filing date of October
15, 1993.
Appellants assert that “[t]he focus of the ’271 application is the
introduction of drugs and other therapeutic compounds to the interior of
cells.” (Br. 14.) According to Appellants, while the ’271 Application
exemplifies the use of linear polymers to introduce genetic material across
cellular membranes and into cells, the disclosure is not limited to their use
(id.). Appellants argue that they incorporated by reference the polymers
taught by Schmolka4 and Lundsted,5 both of which teach octablock
copolymers (Br. 14). Thus, according to Appellants, “the ’271 application
3 Kabanov, U.S. Patent No. 5,656,611, issued August 12, 1997.
4 Schmolka et al. (Schmolka), “A Review of Block Polymer Surfactants,” J.
Am. Oil Chemist Soc., Vol. 54, pp. 110-16 (1977)
5 Lundsted, U.S. Patent No. 2,674,619, issued April 6, 1954.
3
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