Appeal No. 96-0908
Application 08/160,118
been motivated to provide the claimed status bits for the
results of ALU operations in a computer in view of Auslander
and common knowledge in the art. The rejections of claims 4-6
and 16-18 over Auslander and Diefendorff and Kawata and
Diefendorff are sustained.
Appellants argue that Diefendorff discloses a graphics
merge instruction in the context of a Z-buffering system and
"Diefendorff et al provides no motivation to employ another
type of status determination because his disclosure is
narrowly directed to only a single problem" (Br8, lines 4-6,
and Br17, lines 27-29; similar statements at Br8, lines 30-33,
and Br9, lines 21-23, Br18, lines 25-27, Br19, lines 24-26).
The status bits have no claimed relationship to the
conditional store instruction. One of ordinary skill in the
pertinent art would have been motivated to provide the status
bits for other instructions since the status bits were well
known and conventional in the computer art as shown by
Auslander. Assuming, arguendo, that there was a relationship
between the status bits and the conditional store instruction,
one of ordinary skill in the art is presumed to have had
sufficient knowledge to generalize the two register
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