Appeal No. 2001-1912
Application No. 08/803,392
Instant claim 1 requires, inter alia, that the bandpass filter coupled to the down-
conversion section is integrated into a single IC chip with the down-conversion section,
discriminator, up-conversion section, and shaping filter. We thus do not sustain the
rejection of claim 1, nor that of claims 2-6, 11, and 12 depending therefrom. We also
note our agreement with appellants (Brief at 15-16; Reply Brief at 2-3) that the rejection
does not account for all limitations of instant claim 1, and therefore further falls short in
setting out a prima facie case for obviousness.
Appellants argue that claim 25 and the claims depending therefrom (i.e., 26 and
27) are patentable because the art does not disclose or suggest use of a frequency
hopping scheme to provide interference immunity in connection with a radio on a single
IC chip. (Brief at 23-24.) The examiner cites The Communications Handbook3 in
support of official notice that various types of communications schemes for sharing
bandwidth in data communications were known (Answer at 5), including the “frequency
hopping” scheme as recited in claim 25 (id. at 9-10). In view of the known advantages,
the examiner concludes that it would have been obvious to use the scheme in order to
share a communication spectrum with other transceivers (id. at 5).
Appellants respond (Reply Brief at 8) that the cited references fail to suggest the
use of frequency hopping in combination with the other elements of the claims. Further,
appellants allege that frequency hopping is not necessary in systems that rely upon
3 Jerry D. Gibson, Editor-in-Chief, CRC Press, pp. 87-93 (1997).
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