Appeal No. 2002-1498
Application No. 09/042,202
register by using operational mechanisms of the system,” as
claimed. In our view, the term, “using operational mechanisms of
the system” is broad enough to cover any way Barkey’s system
transfers the initial credit value into the credit register, if,
in fact, Barkey performs such a transfer at all.
The register 30 within sender 12 in Barkey would be the
“credit register,” as referred to in the claims. From the
disclosure at column 4, lines 26-65, of Barkey, it appears that
at the time of initialization, an initial credit value of n is
loaded into the credit register of sender 12 and the same value n
is loaded into the debit register 34 of the second node, or
receiver, 14.
Unlike appellant’s invention, Barkey does not appear to
disclose that the credit value n is initially loaded into the
debit register and then the contents of the debit register are
transferred to the credit register in sender 12. Rather, Barkey
appears to load the same credit value n into both the credit and
debit registers. Having said that, however, and with a full
understanding as to how appellant’s disclosed invention differs
from that of Barker, we now focus on the instant invention, as
claimed.
With regard to claim 1, there is no requirement that the
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