Fletcher YoderThe Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences holds that, in order to rely on secondary considerations in support of the non-obviousness of a claim, there must be a clear nexus between the evidence presented and the invention as claimed.
Based on intrinsic evidence, the Federal Circuit affirms a district court claim construction decision in which the conjunction “and” is used to express mutually exclusive alternatives. Additionally, in view of evidence of unpredictability among alternative formulations, unexpected results, and objective indicia of nonobviousness, the Federal Circuit affirms the lower court finding of nonobviousness of a claimed compound.