Appeal No. 1999-0001
Application No. 08/613,828
Claims 10 through 20 and 24 through 29 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being
unpatentable over Miller in view of Cotie and what is known in the art.
Reference is made to the briefs and the answer for the respective positions of the appellants and
the examiner.
OPINION
The obviousness rejection of claims 1 through 5, 20 and 24 through 29 is reversed. The
obviousness rejection of claims 10 through 19 is sustained.
Appellants have not mounted a challenge to the examiner’s finding that “[t]he feature of polling
remote stations in a control system is known in the art as evidenced by Cotie” (Answer, page 4).
Appellants have, however, challenged the examiner’s finding (Answer, pages 3 and 4) that “[t]he claim
limitation regarding ‘each switch control device being physically located on a hot AC line extending
between a source and a load’ is impliedly or explicitly met by Miller’s teaching that his transceiver
decoder 56 (considered equivalent to the claimed ‘switch control device’) is ‘generally located near the
loads to be controlled by its relays,’ (col. 4, lines 18-19).” The examiner’s contentions to the contrary
notwithstanding, Miller neither “explicitly” nor “impliedly” teaches a switch control device physically
located on a hot AC line extending between a source and a load by the mere location of transceiver
decoder 56 “near” the loads to be controlled by the relays (Brief, pages 4 and 5). For this reason, the
obviousness rejection of claims 1 through 5 is reversed.
3
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007