Appeal No. 97-2473 Page 6
Application No. 08/264,582
invention of claims 68, 69, 72-77, and 80-83. Accordingly, we
reverse.
We begin our consideration of the obviousness of the
rejected claims by recalling that in rejecting claims under 35
U.S.C. § 103, the patent examiner bears the initial burden of
establishing a prima facie case of obviousness. A prima facie
case is established when the teachings from the prior art
itself would appear to have suggested the claimed subject
matter to a person of ordinary skill in the art. If the
examiner fails to establish a prima facie case, an obviousness
rejection is improper and will be overturned. In re
Rijckaert, 9 F.3d 1531, 1532, 28 USPQ2d 1955, 1956 (Fed. Cir.
1993). With this in mind, we analyze the examiner’s
rejection.
Regarding independent claim 68, the examiner notes that
Barnes teaches a data processing system comprising a plurality
of n processors, each of said processors operable from an
instruction stream provided from a memory for controlling a
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