Examiner Rejection Affirmed.

Notes

• [Updated based on Jon's comment below] Pfizer has the opportunity to request a re-hearing and may also appeal the BPAI decision. Regarding a further appeal, the pertinent portion of 35 U.S.C. § 141 reads as follows: A patent owner, or a third-party requester in an inter partes reexamination proceeding, who is in any reexamination proceeding dissatisfied with the final decision in an appeal to the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences under section 134 may appeal the decision only to the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Although the language is amenable to multiple interpretations, the best interpretation of this is that a patent owner undergoing an ex parte reexamination may only appeal to the CAFC.
• The re-examination file history is quite long and includes over seventy-three-thousand pages (this total does not include the USPTO patent-documents cited as prior art).
• What is the expiration date of this patent? Its earliest priority date is a Great Britain from June 9, 1993. A European PCT was then filed on May 13, 1994 which was published on December 22, 1994. The US National Stage application was filed March 4, 1996 and the patent issued October 22, 2002. There is no terminal disclaimer apparent from the file history and the PTO does not indicate any patent term extension due to FDA regulatory delay. [>Granted FDA Extensions][http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cder/ob/docs/patexclnew.cfm?Appl_No=020895&Product_No=001&table1=OB_Rx">FDA Orange Book Listing]