Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Detailed Action
This application is a national stage application of PCT/US2022/052873, filed December 14, 2022, which claims benefit of foreign application 63/290843, filed December 17, 2021. Claims 1-17 and 33-37 are pending in this application and examined on the merits herein. Applicant’s preliminary amendment submitted February 24, 2025, is acknowledged wherein claims 7-9 are amended, claims 18-32 are canceled, and new claims 33-37 are introduced.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
The following is a quotation of the appropriate paragraphs of 35 U.S.C. 102 that form the basis for the rejections under this section made in this Office action:
A person shall be entitled to a patent unless –
(a)(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale, or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claims 1-5, 9-11, and 13-17 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by foreign patent publication CN110841063 to Tao Min et al. (Reference and English machine translation included with PTO-892, herein referred to as Min) as evidenced by Kalidas et al. (Reference included with PTO-892)
Independent claim 1 is directed to a method of treating a parasite in an animal such as a chicken, by administering an effective amount of beta-1,4-mannobiose to the animal. Dependent claims 2-5 further define the specific parasite, for example Eimeria, while claim 9 specifies that the animal is a chicken.
Min discloses an anti-Eimeria composition for treating coccidiosis in broiler chickens, comprising mannobiose and mannotriose from palm fruit, among other ingredients. (p. 3 paragraphs 3-6) While Min does not specifically state that the mannobiose is beta-1,4-mannobiose, Kalidas discloses an analysis of mannooligosaccharides isolated from palm kernel oil cake. (p. 349 sections 2.1-2.2) These oligosaccharides were determined to have beta-1,4- linkages (p. 350 section 3.2, p. 453 left column first paragraph) Therefore the mannobiose described by Min is expected to inherently prosses a beta-1,4 linkage. Still further, Min discloses an experimental method wherein this composition was administered in animal feed to broiler chickens challenged with Eimeria oocysts. (p. 5 paragraphs 32-38) This treatment method would therefore anticipate the presently claimed method.
Regarding claim 10, the composition described by Min includes more than 70% disaccharide and trisaccharide. (p. 3 paragraph 12) Regarding claims 13 and 14, since the treatment described in the example of Min reduces the number of oocysts detected, this is reasonably considered to constitute inhibiting or killing the parasite. Regarding claim 15, none of the animals treated appear to have been infected with salmonella. Regarding claims 16-17, the composition described by Min also contains the probiotic Clostridium butyricum.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 103 which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action:
A patent for a claimed invention may not be obtained, notwithstanding that the claimed invention is not identically disclosed as set forth in section 102, if the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains. Patentability shall not be negated by the manner in which the invention was made.
Claim 12 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Tao Min et al. (Reference and English machine translation included with PTO-892, herein referred to as Min) as evidenced by Kalidas et al. (Reference included with PTO-892)
The disclosure of Min is discussed above. Min does not specifically disclose the percent of the dry matter portion of the feed the mannobiose constitutes, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to determine an appropriate dose of the composition to administer in a given amount of food for optimal effect, knowing that the active ingredient mannobiose is itself effective. Doing so would be a natural and obvious part of determining the appropriate dose to administer.
Therefore the invention taken as a whole is prima facie obvious.
Claims 6-8 and 33-37 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Min as applied to claims 1-5 and 9-17 above, and further in view of PCT international publication WO2015/815779 to Nogareda Burch et al. (Reference included with PTO-892, English machine translation included with PTO-1449, herein referred to as Burch)
The disclosure of Min is discussed above. Min does not specifically disclose a method of treating E. maxima. However, as discussed above, Min generally discloses treating coccidiosis. However, Burch discloses methods for treating or preventing coccidiosis. (p. 3 second paragraph) furthermore coccidiosis is described as being caused by infectious agents including Eimeria, such as E. maxima. (p. 7 first and second paragraph) It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the invention to administer the therapeutic composition described by Burch for the treatment of coccidiosis caused by E. maxima. One of ordinary skill in the art would have expected the treatment to be effective for this purpose based on Min’s disclosure of treating coccidiosis caused by a different parasite from the genus Eimieria.
Regarding claims 7, 8, and 33-37, Min only describers treating chickens. However, the second paragraph of p. 7 of Burch describes Eimeria as infecting many other species including sheep, geese, cows, horses, pigs, turkeys, and ducks, which also suffer from coccidiosis caused by these organisms. It would therefore have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the invention to administer the anti-coccidiosis therapy described by Min to any of these other animals infected with Eimeria parasites. One of ordinary skill in the art would have found this to be obvious because Burch describes these same parasites as infecting all of these other species as well.
Therefore the invention taken as a whole is prima facie obvious.
Conclusion
No claims are allowed in this action.
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/ANDREA OLSON/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 1693 9/15/2026
