Appeal No. 1999-1697
Application No. 08/550,270 Page 15
We turn next to the rejection of claims 3, 4, 7, 8, 12, 15,
16, 19, 20, and 24 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over
Hartley and Blackwell in view of Erhard. At the outset, we
reverse the rejections of claims 7, 8, 12, 19, 20, and 24 which
depend from independent claims 5, 10, 17, and 22 because Erhard
does not make up for the deficiencies of Blackwell and Hartley.
Turning to claims 3, 4, 15, and 16, the examiner takes the
position that Hartley and Blackwell do not disclose an ethernet
transceiver. To overcome this deficiency in Hartley and
Blackwell, the examiner turns to Erhard (answer, page 8) for a
teaching that "it would be desirable to provide an interface to
ethernet, and this involves a transceiving means (for example,
I/O adapter 48)." The examiner's rationale (answer, page 9) is
to improve redundancy and reliability. Appellants (brief, page
22) argue that an artisan having "the knowledge of reliability
through redundancy would not pursue the path of integrated
functions in a single DSP as is required by the claims."
Appellants add that the claims require an ethernet transceiver,
and that this aids worker mobility.
We find that Blackwell discloses downloading data files from
and transmitting documents to various networks (col. 1, lines 45
and 46). Erhard discloses that computer systems communicate with
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