Appeal No. 1998-0631
Application 07/957,990
of figure 4 (and figure 5) identifies a keyboard with
internal pressure monitoring and processing capabilities.
The Examiner holds that claims 2-8, 17-23, 31-44,
99-112, and 121-134 do not read on the elected species
because (OA3):
[T]hese claims are all directed to averaging signals
over pre-defined subsets of keys. In contrast
therewith, the description of the Fig. 4 embodiment at
p. 6, line 25 to p. 7, line 5 teaches only that
key-generated signals from all parts of the keyboard
may be combined to form a single parameter, i.e. there
are no predefined "subsets" of keys associated with the
Fig. 4 embodiment. Thus, it appears that the Fig. 4
embodiment is unable to do any sort of "region
averaging" or "shared characteristic" evaluation.
The Examiner appreciates that a determination of whether
claims are readable on an elected species is based on all
parts of the disclosure which are directed to the elected
species, but finds no description linking the rejected
claims to figure 4 (OA4).
Appellant responds: (1) the pressure transducers of
figure 4 are capable of performing any type of averaging
(i.e., any key, regions of keys, or types of keys)
(Br13-14); (2) there is no other species to which the
subject matter of the "rejected" claims can belong, thus
denying Appellant the opportunity to have the claims
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