[00:00:00] Speaker 02: This morning, I'd like to offer a motion. [00:00:04] Speaker 02: And if Adam would please stand. [00:00:09] Speaker 02: I move the admission of Adam Hubbard, who is a member of the Bar as a good standing in the highest court of California. [00:00:15] Speaker 02: I have knowledge of his credentials, and I'm satisfied that he possesses the necessary qualifications. [00:00:22] Speaker 02: Say on a personal note, just briefly, that it's just been an absolute pleasure to have Adam a part of our chambers [00:00:29] Speaker 02: And I won't leave out the most important part of Adam, which is his wonderful family, Kara and Ava and James. [00:00:36] Speaker 02: And it's just been wonderful to have them part of our chambers. [00:00:40] Speaker 02: We look forward to an industrious career. [00:00:43] Speaker 02: Adam worked for as a clerk for another judge in California and now he's moving on to Colorado and we wish him every success. [00:00:55] Speaker 02: And we have every expectation that he would do extraordinarily well in his career and his personal life. [00:01:01] Speaker 02: So I move his admission. [00:01:03] Speaker 00: Do I observe any objections to the admission? [00:01:10] Speaker 00: No, I move the record. [00:01:11] Speaker 00: In that case, with great pleasure, I grant the chief judge's motion. [00:01:18] Speaker 00: Welcome to the court. [00:01:19] Speaker 00: Please raise your hand. [00:01:24] Speaker 02: The first case for argument this morning is 14-1545 in Ray Rodriguez LaFrost. [00:01:48] Speaker 02: Ms. [00:01:49] Speaker 02: Larson. [00:01:51] Speaker 04: Thank you. [00:01:54] Speaker 04: My name is Marina Larson. [00:01:56] Speaker 04: I'm with the firm of Larson and Anderson LLC in Silverthorne, Colorado. [00:02:02] Speaker 04: We wish we were getting this East Coast, the snow there rather than out here. [00:02:07] Speaker 05: You can have all of it that you want. [00:02:11] Speaker 05: Well, we know where to put it. [00:02:15] Speaker 04: What to do with it. [00:02:18] Speaker 04: I'm here today on behalf of the inventors, who I can't pronounce either. [00:02:23] Speaker 04: University of British Columbia and the licensee oncogenics. [00:02:32] Speaker 04: This is kind of an odd case because the cases moved around a lot. [00:02:36] Speaker 04: The examiner didn't argue the same things that the board did. [00:02:44] Speaker 04: But it really, in some level, comes down to a very basic consideration of obviousness. [00:02:49] Speaker 04: When we look at obviousness, we want to see [00:02:52] Speaker 04: that the art has all the elements, and that seems to be the case here, that there's a motivation to combine the elements or to modify those elements to get to the claimed invention, and that there's an expectation of success. [00:03:07] Speaker 04: Those last two, to some extent, go together. [00:03:11] Speaker 04: They're different, but they modify each other. [00:03:14] Speaker 04: The expectation of success has become something of a catchword. [00:03:18] Speaker 04: Oh, it doesn't have to be absolute. [00:03:20] Speaker 04: It only has to be a reasonable expectation of success. [00:03:24] Speaker 04: And that's the answer in the patent office when you argue that there isn't an expectation of success, the examiner, the board will tell you, well, it doesn't have to be absolute. [00:03:38] Speaker 04: It only has to be reasonable. [00:03:39] Speaker 02: Well, what would you say it has to be? [00:03:40] Speaker 04: Well, if you go back to the case where the CCPA actually said [00:03:46] Speaker 04: there wasn't what it was. [00:03:48] Speaker 04: It was a high probability of success. [00:03:51] Speaker 04: The very next case in the sequence goes to reasonable expectation, but it slides to that pancer case. [00:03:58] Speaker 04: What it does need to be is it needs to be more than a coin flip. [00:04:02] Speaker 04: It needs to be more than a possibility. [00:04:05] Speaker 01: So how are we supposed to ascertain [00:04:08] Speaker 02: whether we're at a coin flip stage or at a high probability of success. [00:04:13] Speaker 04: I think we need to look at the entire record and we need to do what this court has said on any number of occasions is to, if you start with a prima facie case to get it going, then you, once the record is complete, you need to go back and start over. [00:04:34] Speaker 04: You need to look at all the references, all the art, all the arguments, the new light, to see if there really is a reasonable expectation of success. [00:04:44] Speaker 04: That's not what the examiner did here. [00:04:46] Speaker 04: In fact, the examiner argued strenuously that the art was totally unpredictable, citing one set of references, and then used a totally different set to say it was absolutely predictable, or at least reasonably predictable. [00:05:06] Speaker 04: And the examiner would not consider those other references. [00:05:11] Speaker 04: The Board of Appeals did and came up with arguments that were new. [00:05:17] Speaker 04: We asked for... But what argument was new? [00:05:19] Speaker 04: In particular, the argument that these references, that the Fortin and Suzuki and other references didn't really count because they had a common, Yanakura and Tamurian [00:05:35] Speaker 04: had a common mechanism of action, that is, they interfered with apoptosis. [00:05:42] Speaker 04: The implication there was that that wasn't the mechanism of action in Yanukura and Suzuki. [00:05:50] Speaker 05: You mean Fortin and Suzuki. [00:05:52] Speaker 05: Or Fortin and Suzuki, rather. [00:05:54] Speaker 04: But in point of fact, we only have two ways to kill cells, apoptosis and necrosis. [00:06:05] Speaker 04: The mechanisms that are in those references are in fact very different. [00:06:11] Speaker 04: It's a little bit like saying, yes, they have a common mechanism of metabolism. [00:06:15] Speaker 04: They're both aerobic. [00:06:17] Speaker 04: That covers slime molds and us. [00:06:21] Speaker 04: There's a lot different there. [00:06:23] Speaker 04: And had we had the opportunity, had that been an argument that the examiner had made, we could have put in a declaration. [00:06:30] Speaker 04: We could have put in arguments pointing those out that really [00:06:35] Speaker 04: There's many, many pathways to apoptosis, and there is no commonality shown in those references. [00:06:44] Speaker 04: More importantly, though, we have a case where one set of references says that this cancer is benefited by HSP-27, and the other set of references says it's not. [00:06:57] Speaker 04: It's benefited by the absence of HSP-27. [00:07:00] Speaker 04: Neither reference says anything about [00:07:06] Speaker 04: radiation therapy. [00:07:10] Speaker 04: They're both in the context of chemotherapy. [00:07:13] Speaker 05: Well, tumeric, of course, is in the context of radiation therapy. [00:07:16] Speaker 05: But it's the wrong cancer. [00:07:17] Speaker 05: Well, it's a different cancer. [00:07:18] Speaker 05: It's a different cancer. [00:07:19] Speaker 05: It says that this may be applicable to cancers in general. [00:07:22] Speaker 04: But it may be. [00:07:24] Speaker 04: It may not be. [00:07:26] Speaker 05: Why isn't that a motivation to combine? [00:07:28] Speaker 04: That may get you to the motivation to combine at some level. [00:07:34] Speaker 04: if there weren't any conflicting evidence about what was going to happen when you did that combination. [00:07:42] Speaker 04: I don't know whether or not, to start with, I don't know for sure what the response of, in terms of HSP-27 production, is going to be in squamous cell carcinoma to radiation. [00:08:01] Speaker 04: I know that in the case of chemotherapy, it appears that some is one way and some is the other. [00:08:09] Speaker 04: Yes, these are different ways of killing cells. [00:08:11] Speaker 04: They're apoptotic, but they get to apoptosis very different ways. [00:08:17] Speaker 00: Isn't the real question the issue raised by the examiner, whether it was obvious to try this combination? [00:08:25] Speaker 04: I think that obvious to try [00:08:30] Speaker 04: is has to be looked at in the context of expectation of success. [00:08:40] Speaker 04: If obvious to try means, well, goodness gracious, wouldn't it be wonderful if we had a better treatment for this cancer? [00:08:48] Speaker 04: And we'll try almost anything to get there. [00:08:53] Speaker 04: But if we don't, because it doesn't cost very much, or it's pretty easy. [00:08:57] Speaker 00: But this isn't almost anything. [00:09:00] Speaker 00: These are two more or less standard treatments. [00:09:07] Speaker 04: But we have two very different results being reported for squamous cell carcinoma. [00:09:14] Speaker 04: And the examiner selected the art that supported the rejection. [00:09:21] Speaker 04: The examiner and the board did not go back and look at the art as a whole. [00:09:26] Speaker 04: They looked at the warts on [00:09:29] Speaker 04: the art that was being presented as a challenge. [00:09:32] Speaker 04: And they didn't look at the warts on the art that made up the prima facie case. [00:09:41] Speaker 04: They set that case on a pedestal. [00:09:44] Speaker 04: They made it very special. [00:09:46] Speaker 04: And they said, you have to attack that. [00:09:48] Speaker 04: And that's contrary to this court's holdings, that you're supposed to go back. [00:09:54] Speaker 04: You're supposed to notice that the very statement [00:09:58] Speaker 04: that's badly cited in the one reference is made and correctly cited in the reference you're relying on. [00:10:05] Speaker 04: That is, there is no showing of a relationship between HSP-27 and radiation. [00:10:14] Speaker 04: Presumably, if one went back and looked at that reference, one would see that that is in fact showing that there is no connection in squamous cell carcinoma. [00:10:23] Speaker 05: I've lost your train of argument there. [00:10:27] Speaker 05: What's the reference that you said that you'd say says there's no relationship between? [00:10:33] Speaker 05: Temoria. [00:10:35] Speaker 05: Between HSP and radiosensitivity? [00:10:40] Speaker 04: Prior to their study, there wasn't. [00:10:44] Speaker 05: But their study established a relationship. [00:10:47] Speaker 04: Only in prostate cancer. [00:10:48] Speaker 05: Well, okay, but I thought you were saying, well, there was other [00:10:54] Speaker 05: art that said there was no relationship. [00:10:56] Speaker 04: There is. [00:10:57] Speaker 04: It's a Fortin reference. [00:11:00] Speaker 05: But Fortin, it seems to me, is a difficult reference for you to rely on because, as the board pointed out, the Fortin citation for that was inapposite. [00:11:12] Speaker 05: And you argue in your brief, but as far as I can see, did not argue before the board. [00:11:17] Speaker 05: that that was just a miscitation and that Fortin reference should have cited something else. [00:11:22] Speaker 05: But as far as the board was concerned, whether the board made a mistake in discounting Fortin, the board pointed out, I think, that the reference that Fortin relied on was just inapposite. [00:11:33] Speaker 05: You would agree with that? [00:11:35] Speaker 04: Yes. [00:11:35] Speaker 05: The board that... I mean, you would agree that it was inapposite. [00:11:38] Speaker 04: Yes. [00:11:38] Speaker 04: In fact, I made that statement. [00:11:40] Speaker 04: I said, I can't rely on this statement in Fortin because [00:11:44] Speaker 04: So that sort of takes Fortin off the table, doesn't it? [00:11:47] Speaker 04: Well, no, because that was only one statement about what went in the art. [00:11:50] Speaker 04: The entire rest of the reference talks about how they didn't find a correlation between HSP27. [00:11:59] Speaker 04: Actually, they did find a correlation that HSP27 was a good thing to have if you were treating squamous cell carcinoma. [00:12:09] Speaker 04: You're talking about Fortin 2001, right? [00:12:11] Speaker 04: Yes. [00:12:13] Speaker 04: And Suzuki says the same thing, that there is this absolute diametric offset between what one set of references says and what another set of references says in the context of squamous cell carcinoma and chemotherapy and HSP-27. [00:12:37] Speaker 04: One set says HSP-27 is good. [00:12:40] Speaker 04: The other set says HSP 27 is bad. [00:12:46] Speaker 04: I don't, you know, since Panzer, no court has ever said that I could find anything more quantitative than reasonable expectation of success. [00:12:58] Speaker 04: And reasonable is one of those awful words. [00:13:01] Speaker 04: It's kind of like substantial. [00:13:03] Speaker 04: It either means more than something or less than something, depending on how you use it. [00:13:08] Speaker 04: But in this case, I think reasonable expectation means a fair level of a reason to believe that you're going to end up with a certain result. [00:13:26] Speaker 04: And here, I think that the fact that there were two very separate observations in the cancer we're talking about with chemotherapy [00:13:40] Speaker 04: leads to it is a coin flip. [00:13:44] Speaker 04: I don't know what's going to happen, whether it's going to be a good thing to get rid of HSB 27 or a bad thing. [00:13:53] Speaker 04: Nothing in the art, if you looked at it as a whole, leads me in either direction to any significant extent. [00:14:03] Speaker 04: In fact, if there's any bias, it would be based on the fact that [00:14:11] Speaker 04: Suzuki's in real patients. [00:14:12] Speaker 04: It's in real tumors. [00:14:15] Speaker 04: Whereas both Temurian, Temurian's in a cell line. [00:14:22] Speaker 04: It's been artificially modified to make HSP-27 to see what happens, to do studies. [00:14:28] Speaker 04: It's not in real people. [00:14:32] Speaker 04: It's not in real cancers. [00:14:36] Speaker 02: We're into your rebuttal, so why don't we save it and hear from the government. [00:14:39] Speaker 02: Thank you. [00:14:51] Speaker 03: May I please the court? [00:14:53] Speaker 03: This is an obviousness case based on express teachings in both of the prior art references that would lead an ordinary artisan to arrive at the claimed invention that... How do we know that? [00:15:06] Speaker 01: Why is this more than the coins left? [00:15:08] Speaker 01: I assume you would think that this is more than the coins left. [00:15:11] Speaker 03: Yes. [00:15:12] Speaker 03: Yes, I do. [00:15:12] Speaker 03: And the reason for that is because if you look at the two primary references of record, Gianna Cora and Tim Morian, [00:15:19] Speaker 03: Yannacora shows you that in the exact sort of cells that they're seeking to claim, which are squamous cell carcinoma cells, that reduction of HSP27 sensitizes those cells to apoptosis. [00:15:32] Speaker 03: And then Yannacora goes on to show that those cells are more susceptible to being killed by chemotherapy. [00:15:37] Speaker 03: So then you have tamorin, which teaches that you can also use radiation therapy to kill sensitized cells. [00:15:44] Speaker 03: So for these cell lines, which are squamous cell carcinoma cells, we know that they are [00:15:50] Speaker 03: they are affected by lowering levels of HSP 27. [00:15:53] Speaker 03: And so you have a reasonable expectation of success when you have all of these teachings in the prior art. [00:15:59] Speaker 03: And really just one more step that it actually needs to be performed. [00:16:04] Speaker 03: But based on these teachings, you'd have every expectation that it would work. [00:16:09] Speaker 05: What do you make of Suzuki? [00:16:11] Speaker 05: How should we think about the Suzuki art vis-a-vis the two pieces of art on which the board principally relies? [00:16:19] Speaker 03: Well, the Suzuki reference, the board characterized it as unpredictable. [00:16:23] Speaker 03: They made that finding a fact in the enablement context. [00:16:27] Speaker 03: And that was a finding that it taught both that HSP 27 expression could be good and that it could be bad. [00:16:35] Speaker 03: So there was, it said unpredictability or ambiguity, but significantly it found when it got to the legal conclusion of enablement that there wasn't so much unpredictability that the full scope of the claims couldn't be enabled. [00:16:47] Speaker 03: And then turning to obviousness, it kind of reached a similar conclusion, saying, yes, Suzuki does suggest it, that both things can happen with Hsp27. [00:16:58] Speaker 03: But in light of the clear teachings of Temurian and Yonakura, you'd know at least it would work in these particular cell lines. [00:17:06] Speaker 03: And I think that goes back to what the examiner's rationale was, although it wasn't necessarily explicitly stated. [00:17:14] Speaker 03: happen a lot in prosecution where you have an enablement rejection for the broad scope of the claim, but then you have an obviousness rejection that looks at a particular area that the prior might have practiced or might have rendered obvious. [00:17:27] Speaker 03: So the examiner was saying that Suzuki suggests that across the range of squamous cell carcinoma cells, which are cells that can be in various organs of the body, maybe you wouldn't know how all of them would react. [00:17:40] Speaker 03: And that was the examiner's position that the board reversed. [00:17:43] Speaker 03: But on the other hand, when you look at Yonakura, and they've looked at particular types of squamous cell carcinoma cells, you know how those cells are going to respond. [00:17:53] Speaker 03: And that's why you have both an obviousness and an enablement rejection. [00:17:58] Speaker 00: So here we have a crowded field. [00:18:01] Speaker 00: We have a deadly disease. [00:18:04] Speaker 00: Combination therapies have been known and have been tried in a lot of areas, and nobody [00:18:12] Speaker 00: had plucked out of the prior art this particular combination, which turns out to be quite effective. [00:18:22] Speaker 00: And so what makes, if it was so obvious, what took them so long? [00:18:27] Speaker 00: I mean, why, if to, again, when you are in the middle of a lot of experimentation and a lot of concern, and yet this one particular approach [00:18:41] Speaker 00: is not in the prior art. [00:18:44] Speaker 00: The only thing that makes it obvious is with hindsight looking at the result. [00:18:50] Speaker 03: Your Honor, I think in this case, what's notable about it and why I think the obviousness rejection should be affirmed is that applicants didn't try to even submit any objective evidence of non-obviousness. [00:19:04] Speaker 03: In a lot of the cases where a combination therapy might have looked like with hindsight it would be obvious, [00:19:11] Speaker 03: the applicants or in district court, the litigants submitted evidence that would show exactly why the prioror hadn't tried it. [00:19:20] Speaker 03: There's none of that here, and I think that's very notable. [00:19:24] Speaker 03: So, I think in contrast to some of those other cases, this case for obviousness is stronger here where you don't even have an attempt to show that there's any objective in this non-obviousness. [00:19:36] Speaker 03: And for something like combination therapy, I think [00:19:39] Speaker 03: that that evidence would be particularly helpful if it's available to show that you're not looking at this with hindsight. [00:19:46] Speaker 03: And again, although the prior art might not, at least with the records we have, might not have done this previously, Yonipura came pretty close. [00:19:55] Speaker 03: They just didn't, they used chemotherapy instead of radiation therapy. [00:20:01] Speaker 03: And I'd also like to point out that I think the facts of this case are very close to Inrei O'Farrell [00:20:08] Speaker 03: And I think that case also talked about the reasonable expectation of success. [00:20:13] Speaker 03: And while it might not have put a lot of explanation to what reasonable means, I think the facts of that case are instructive. [00:20:21] Speaker 03: So in that case, it was also in the biotechnology field. [00:20:24] Speaker 03: And there was a lot of teachings in the prior art about whether or not you could express a protein in cells. [00:20:31] Speaker 03: And the prior art hadn't really done it with a DNA sequence, it had done it with [00:20:36] Speaker 03: something that was short of that. [00:20:38] Speaker 03: And then the inventors came back and they tried to get an invention to expressing the full protein. [00:20:45] Speaker 03: And they argued that biotechnology was a very unpredictable field. [00:20:49] Speaker 03: And until you actually did it, you had no reasonable expectation of success. [00:20:54] Speaker 03: And this is the case where the court said that it doesn't need to be an absolute expectation of success. [00:21:00] Speaker 03: It needs to be a reasonable one. [00:21:02] Speaker 03: And I think if you look at the facts of that case compared to here, they're very similar. [00:21:06] Speaker 03: The prior arts did almost everything except try the exact combination that was here. [00:21:11] Speaker 03: And yes, biotechnology in general may be an unpredictable field, but when you have a lot of teachings in a particular area, unpredictability can't just automatically be a trump card. [00:21:23] Speaker 05: You have a senescent in your brief, which I wanted to draw out a little from you. [00:21:29] Speaker 05: You say, and this is at page three, that squamous cell carcinomas can give rise to various cancers, including, rarely, prostate cancer. [00:21:37] Speaker 05: What's the relationship? [00:21:38] Speaker 05: Where I'm going with this is trying to see whether the reference in tumourian to prostate cancer creates an overlap with the squamous cell carcinoma reference from Yantakura. [00:21:52] Speaker 05: What's the relationship between squamous cell carcinoma and the rare instances in which prostate cancer is associated with? [00:21:59] Speaker 05: that carcinoma. [00:22:00] Speaker 03: My general understanding is that prostate cancers can be both from the squamous cell carcinoma source and from other sources. [00:22:08] Speaker 03: And on our record, there originally was a 103 rejection based on tamorin alone. [00:22:14] Speaker 03: And the applicants came back and said there are different kinds of prostate cancers, and they contested whether or not tamorin showed squamous cell carcinoma. [00:22:23] Speaker 03: And so the examiner reversed their rejection and instead relied on Yanakura and Timurian. [00:22:28] Speaker 05: OK. [00:22:28] Speaker 05: But was that reversal based on the examiner's conclusion that the particular type of prostate cancer that was the subject of the Timurian investigation was not squamous cell type? [00:22:42] Speaker 03: There was no explicit finding, but that was the argument of applicants. [00:22:46] Speaker 03: So I think it's fair to say that you didn't contest it at the very least. [00:22:50] Speaker 03: Thank you. [00:22:52] Speaker 03: If there are no further questions, I'll leave the rest of my time. [00:23:04] Speaker 04: Thank you. [00:23:05] Speaker 04: Just for clarification, Your Honor, the cell line used in Temurian was an adenocarcinoma. [00:23:11] Speaker 05: Which is not squamous cell. [00:23:12] Speaker 04: Which is not squamous cell carcinoma. [00:23:14] Speaker 04: We have cell types and then we have where they are. [00:23:17] Speaker 04: Right. [00:23:19] Speaker 04: Prostate unfortunately gets called prostate no matter what, frequently no matter what kind, but in this case it was a cell line. [00:23:26] Speaker 04: It was clearly a cell line. [00:23:27] Speaker 04: It wasn't in patients and it wasn't happening. [00:23:30] Speaker 05: That's clear and tomorrow? [00:23:31] Speaker 04: Yes. [00:23:32] Speaker 04: Okay. [00:23:34] Speaker 04: I just wanted to comment. [00:23:35] Speaker 04: I made a note in this. [00:23:36] Speaker 04: It's kind of ironic that the alleged unpredictability of what's found within the Suzuki references used as evidence of predictability. [00:23:48] Speaker 04: I would also point out that Ms. [00:23:52] Speaker 04: Simpson acknowledged that certain arguments were not explicitly stated by the examiner, which sounds to me like a new ground of rejection at the board that I should have an opportunity to respond to if the rejection is not reversed. [00:24:10] Speaker 04: I'd also like to ask, what objective evidence would I put in? [00:24:15] Speaker 04: This isn't a case where I can test [00:24:20] Speaker 04: A, and see if it works, and test B, and see if it works better, because they're different. [00:24:30] Speaker 04: What would I compare it to? [00:24:32] Speaker 04: The fact that what's unexpected, what's unobvious, what there is no expectation of success is, is that it works at all. [00:24:41] Speaker 04: It might not work, or it's going to work. [00:24:43] Speaker 04: I don't have anything to compare it to. [00:24:46] Speaker 04: I can't compare it to chemotherapy alone, [00:24:50] Speaker 04: or radiation alone, because I've been told I have radiation in HSB 27 in one, and I've been told that it is expected that it's going to work. [00:25:05] Speaker 04: And chemotherapy and radiation aren't comparable in terms of how effective they are. [00:25:12] Speaker 04: It's not like I'm taking a drug and adding something else to it. [00:25:16] Speaker 04: I am changing the drug. [00:25:19] Speaker 04: I'm changing the treatment. [00:25:21] Speaker 04: I don't expect them to work exactly the same. [00:25:25] Speaker 04: And finally, this is not O'Farrell because here we have general, in O'Farrell we had generalized unpredictability of the art. [00:25:34] Speaker 04: Here we have very specific. [00:25:36] Speaker 04: Art says A, art says not A. Which one do you choose? [00:25:45] Speaker 02: Thank you. [00:25:45] Speaker 02: We have the argument. [00:25:46] Speaker 02: We thank both counsel and the case was submitted.