Appeal No. 95-4135
Application 07/772,998
We will reverse the obviousness rejection of claims 1
through 9, 11 through 17 and 21 because we agree with appellants'
argument throughout the brief that the applied references neither
teach nor would they have suggested to the skilled artisan a
decoder associated with a circuit breaker that decodes a coded
signal for that circuit breaker, and that returns a response
signal after decoding the coded signal.
At the outset, we note that appellants argue (Brief,
page 7) that "[t]he mere fact that a large number of references
are needed is a strong indication of nonobviousness." In
response to this argument, we agree with the examiner (Answer,
page 14) that "the number of references does not have a bearing
on the propriety of the rejection; theoretically such could be
infinite." See Ex parte Fine, 1927 Dec. Comm'r Pats. 84 (Comm’r
Pats. 1926).
The load management circuit breaker of Borona discloses
two circuit breakers 14 and 15 that can be locally controlled in
response to current overloads, or that can be externally
controlled via a control signal from an external power source
transmitted by power line communication signals 93 (column 5,
lines 11 through 14). During local control of the circuit
breakers, a current overload will cause movable contacts 22 to
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