Appeal No. 95-0020
Application No. 08/052,213
However, instant claim 42 does not call for “modulating,”
per se, but rather for “modulating the rate of a voltage
transition at the output terminal…” Notwithstanding the
examiner’s valiant, and commendable, effort to interpret the
broad language of claim 42 in such a manner as to make Bianchi’s
disclosure applicable to such language, it is our view that
Bianchi simply does not disclose or suggest the modulation of
“the rate of a voltage transition.” At best, perhaps one could
say that an output voltage level in Bianchi is “modulated” by
switching transistors on or off, based on current magnitude, but
even this interpretation is one that views as a modulation the
switching of an output voltage between two levels. Quite
clearly, there is no modulation of a “rate of a voltage
transition at the output terminal” [emphasis ours], as claimed,
in the digital circuitry of Bianchi. We simply cannot agree with
the examiner, at page 4 of the answer, that Bianchi’s disabling
of pulldown transistor NL “inherently ‘modulates the rate of
voltage transition’ in that the disabling of the large transistor
will slow down the transition of the output terminal from the
previous logic high to a logical low.”
Since we find that Bianchi’s digital circuitry does not
teach or suggest the claimed “modulating the rate of a voltage
transition at the output terminal…,” Bianchi cannot anticipate
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