This is a guest post from Hans Sauer, Deputy General Counsel, Intellectual Property for BIO.

?Recently, I set out to find real-world examples of recent rejections under the USPTO Guidance, to do my own sampling rather than rely on reported anecdotes. In just two hours of not very systematic searching, I was able to identify dozens of cases that have these new rejections, and I have attached some of the more interesting ones for you. [These can be found at the end of this post.] I focused mainly on applications with product claims, and pulled up method claims only incidentally.

?As expected, these new ?product of nature? rejections go far beyond nucleic acid claims. Interesting examples include multipart vaccine preparations, industrial enzymes, organic crop protection products, a pharmaceutical composition and method of treatment involving an anticancer molecule from a marine sponge, and even a method for washing laundry. We?re also now seeing rejections of monoclonal antibody claims, which is something we were worried would happen. Perusing the attached rejections only takes a half hour; it?s a quick way to get an impression of what?s going on.?

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