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Rh inventors had disclosed “a quality common” to fibrous and textile substances that made them “peculiarly” adapted to incandescent lighting, but they did not. Ibid. Finally, in Holland Furniture, a company that had developed a starch glue that was similar enough to animal glue to be used for wood veneering included a claim in its patent covering all “starch glue which, [when] combined with about three parts or less … of water, will have substantially the same properties as animal glue.” 277 U. S., at 251. The specification described the key input—the “starch ingredient”—in terms of its “use or function” rather than its “physical characteristics or chemical properties.” Id., at 256. The problem, as the Court put it, was that “[o]ne attempting to use or avoid the use of [the] discovery as so claimed and described functionally could do so only after elaborate experimentation” with different starches. Id., at 257.

Amgen insists that its claims are nevertheless enabled because scientists can make and use every functional antibody if they simply follow the “roadmap” or “conservative substitution.” These two approaches, however, amount to little more than two research assignments. The “roadmap” merely describes step-by-step Amgen’s own trial-and-error method for finding functional antibodies. Not