Appeal 2007-0856
Application 09/281,474
elements in the fashion claimed by the patent at issue.” KSR Int’l Co. v.
Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. __, __, 82 USPQ2d 1385, 1396 (2007).
Here, we agree with the Examiner that it would have been obvious to
one of ordinary skill in the art to include the metal-ion binding backbones
described in Sharma as the metal binding domain of Palladino. Although
Sharma describes including these metal-ion binding backbones in a structure
that conformationally fixes the biological-function domain, Appellants have
provided no evidence that including these metal-ion binding backbones to
label the non-RGD peptide of Palladino would cause the non-RGD peptide
to lose activity. In addition, we agree with the Examiner that one of
ordinary skill in the art would have included a linking group, such as the
C(=O) depicted in Sharma, between the non-RGD peptide and the metal
binding domain of Palladino in order to reduce potential steric hindrance.
With regard to claim 1, Appellants argue that Palladino “states that
‘[i]n some embodiments, labels are attached by spacer arms of various
lengths to reduce potential stearic hindrance.’ . . . However, the labels are
not chelators, and thus the limitation of ‘a linking group between the
targeting moiety and chelator’ cannot be met.” (Br. 8.) Appellants also
argue that the Examiner “failed to analyze how one skilled in the art, armed
with the Palladino reference’s single disclosure of ‘spacer arms’ (found
solely at col. 6, lines 54-55) would arrive at Appellants[’] claimed formula”
(id.).
We are not persuaded by these arguments. First, we find that
Palladino describes labels that are chelators for the reasons discussed above.
Second, although Palladino does not describe the structure of its spacer
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