Appeal No. 2001-2553
Application No. 08/512,369
requests during a sampling period, referring to Figure 4 and
alleging that “high execution time reduces the number of sleeps
that can be accommodated within a specific time period” (answer-
page 6). The examiner then concludes that it would have been
obvious “to identify the processor with the smallest number of
sleep requests since this would indicate the time a processor
spends in executing a task” (answer-page 6).
First, we find the examiner’s rationale for making the
combination insufficient to establish a prima facie case of
obviousness because while it may be that identifying the
processor with the smallest number of sleep requests indicates
the time a processor spends in executing a task, this does not
explain why or how the skilled artisan would have been led to
apply such an identification of a processor with the smallest
number of sleep requests to Rudolph to achieve any particular
result.
More importantly, we will not sustain the rejection of claim
50 (or of claim 51, containing a similar limitation) over Rudolph
and Leung because we agree with appellant that Leung does not
appear to teach what the examiner alleges it to teach. In
particular, the examiner points to Figure 4 and to page 411,
section 6, first paragraph, for a teaching of “computing the
-6–
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