Appeal No. 1998-2864
Application No. 08/338,235
portable monitoring unit to select any previously received
measurement data for display. Accordingly, the disputed
limitation, quite clearly, is “critical.” In any event, lack of
“criticality” is not a measure of the obviousness of the claimed
subject matter. The examiner was apparently using a “design
choice” rationale in rejecting claims 6 and 15 but we cannot
agree that the storage of information regarding measurement data
for later retrieval so that an operator may select, via a keypad,
measurement data of a selected parameter is a mere “design
choice.”
Since the examiner has not sufficiently addressed this claim
limitation in the rejection, we will not sustain the rejection of
claims 6 and 15 under 35 U.S.C. 103.
Claim 16 recites that the control console is in “the engine
room, the control room or the bridge of a ship and the monitored
parameters pertain to operation of the ship.” It is the
examiner’s position that while Kobayashi does not disclose such
an environment of use, teaching, instead, that the control is
located in an engine of an automobile, the artisan would have
readily recognized using Kobayashi’s system in a ship
environment, if desired. That is, the examiner contends that the
claim limitations of claim 16 merely indicate an intended use.
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