Appeal No. 1999-1594
Application No. 08/491,467
motivation for this modification in that he provides a
redundant communication path so that communication may
be continue in spite of a hardware failure. With such
a desire in mind, one of ordinary skill would have
wanted to further improve the Allen system by having a
simple inexpensive way of maintaining communication in
the event that the primary cluster controllers (18b and
18c, for example) fail leaving any particular cluster
without connection to the ring configuration.
Allen discloses redundant peripheral device controllers each
connected to a separate peripheral device bus for maintaining
communications even if one of the controllers fails. Graber
(column 2, lines 39-46) teaches splitting of system busses for
allowing simultaneous data transfer on each of the split busses.
Although the examiner argues that it would have been obvious
to include Graber's switches to isolate or connect the 12(n) bus
to the 14(n+1) bus, we find no suggestion in either reference for
connecting Allen's busses as claimed. In fact, Allen
specifically provides separate, redundant busses. Further,
Graber does not relate to a fault tolerance, and, therefore,
cannot provide the motivation or suggestion for modifying the
fault-tolerance of Allen's system, as proposed by the examiner.
Therefore, the examiner has failed to establish a prima facie
case of obviousness, and we cannot sustain the rejection of
claims 1, 7 through 10, 18, 19, and 21 over Allen in view of
Graber.
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