Opinion ID: 799379
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The 2,3-Dichloro Propoxy Compound

Text: According to the Defendants, the district court erred by failing to find that aripiprazole would have been obvious over the SE '945 application, which taught that the 2,3-dichloro propoxy compound had antipsychotic activity. We disagree. The Defendants' argument strains the scope of the SE '945 application. Id. at , 2010 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 132595 at . As the district court correctly found, the SE '945 application lists the 2,3-dichloro propoxy compound as one among hundreds of examples that may be useful for an extensive list of potential central nervous system controlling activities, id., and fails to tie the 2,3-dichloro propoxy to any meaningful suggestion of antipsychotic activity. The Defendants, citing Pfizer, 480 F.3d 1348, allege that the SE '945 application's generic disclosure is all that is required for obviousness. Br. Defs.-Appellants Apotex, at 37. In Pfizer, this court held that the claimed amlodipine besylate salt would have been obvious in view of the known chemical structure of amlodipine and a prior art group of salt-forming anions including benzene sulphonate (which combines with amlodipine to form the besylate salt). Pfizer, 480 F.3d at 1372. This court premised its conclusion on findings that the prior art not only provided ample motivation to narrow the [prior art] genus of . . . salt-forming anions . . . to a few [species], id. at 1363, but also predicted the results, id. at 1367. In the present case, in contrast to Pfizer, the Defendants failed to make an analogous showing. The district court thus correctly found that one of ordinary skill in the art would not have selected the 2,3-dichloro propoxy compound as a lead compound for further antipsychotic research. Furthermore, as Otsuka points out, the Defendants' theory that aripiprazole would have been obvious over the unsubstituted butoxy and the 2,3-dichloro propoxy rested in large part upon an asserted bracketing theory i.e., that one would have combined those two asserted compounds to arrive at aripiprazole, which shares some structural features of both. The district court found that the Defendants' theory constituted an improper hindsight analysis. Otsuka, 2010 WL 4596324, at , 2010 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 132595, at . The Defendants do not on appeal challenge the district court's finding or re-assert their bracketing theory. Accordingly, we conclude that the Defendants failed to prove by clear and convincing evidence that aripiprazole would have been obvious over the 2,3-dichloro propoxy.