Appeal No. 1999-2412
Application No. 08/553,024
between the loadable device driver and the operating system for communication. The
examiner applies Willman for these teachings and holds that it would have been obvious to
use the system of Willman in APA “because it would enhance an efficient method of
communicating with peripheral devices” [answer-page 7].
We will not sustain the rejection of claims 1-39 under 35 U.S.C. § 103.
Each of independent claims 1, 16, 31, 34 and 35 requires, in one form or another, a
loadable device driver which includes data address translating means for translating data
address information communicated between the operating system and the mass memory
storage peripheral computer device and the loading of the loadable device driver into the
system RAM during start-up of the system wherein the communication of the loadable
device driver with the operating system is such that it does not require the system BIOS,
any protocol translation, or any other type of data address translation mechanism.
The examiner identifies the file system driver (FSD) of Willman as being analogous
to the claimed loadable device driver and this would appear to be a fair assessment as far
as the FSD being a loadable driver. As explained at column 5 of Willman, at lines 15-26,
the FSD may be updated without requiring modification of the
operating system kernel so the FSD would appear to be loadable. While Willman is not
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