“The CAFC agreed that the Board’s interpretations of the claims were sufficient ‘in the absence of a definition within the specification.’”
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) today affirmed a Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) decision today that upheld an examiner’s rejection of certain claims of a patent application for a cancer immunotherapy invention. The opinion was authored by Judge Lourie.
Mohammad A. Mazed appealed from the rejection of claims 85 and 87 of his patent application titled “Molecular System for Cancer Biology” for obviousness. Mazed argued that the Board erred in accepting the examiner’s interpretations of the claim terms “engineered,” “coupled,” and “biocompatible polymer,” which the Board concluded were sufficient “in the absence of a definition within the specification.” Mazed also argued that the PTAB’s factual findings were not supported by substantial evidence.
On review, the CAFC said Mazed’s application “does not define the term ‘engineered,’ and nothing in the specification or claim language supports interpreting that language to including only synthetic biocomponents.” As for the term “coupled,” the court also agreed with the Board that “nothing in the claim language or specification requires the identifying protein to be bound directly to the dendritic cell,” thus failing to distinguish it from the prior art. And with respect to “biocompatible polymer,” while Mazed argued that the Board’s finding that the term “can include polymers of nucleic acids, such as DNA, RNA, or XNA,” was error, the court said “the plain language of the claim does not require the ‘first scaffold of a biocompatible polymer’ to be distinct from the claimed DNA, RNA, or XNA origami.” The court therefore found no error in the CAFC’s interpretation of the claims.
Mazed also said the Board failed to sufficiently explain “why the claimed engineered dendritic cell ‘would have been an obvious choice,’” and thus that its conclusions were not supported by substantial evidence. But the CAFC pointed to the Board’s explanation in its decision that “a person of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated ‘to prepare the engineered [antigen presenting cell] APC comprising the origami nanostructure for interacting with a T cell as taught by [the prior art], and choose a dendritic cell as the APC comprising an origami nanostructure for binding a synthetic peptide tumor antigen as taught by [the prior art] with a reasonable expectation of success.” Ultimately, said the court, the Board sufficiently detailed its reasoning and its obviousness conclusion was supported by substantial evidence.
