Appeal No. 2003-0965
Application No. 09/030,829
With respect to independent claim 3, we find that the Examiner
has not addressed the limitation of Appellants' claims that require
that "the timing of the output of the acknowledgment signal being
. . . continuous . . . for each read data." For this reason alone, we
find that the Examiner has not met the initial burden of establishing
a prima facie case of obviousness with respect to the rejection based
on these two references. Therefore, we will not sustain the
Examiner's rejection under 35 U.S.C. § 103.
Conclusion
In summary we have not sustained the rejection under
35 U.S.C. § 103 of claims 1-10. We have entered a new ground of
rejection against claims 1-10 under 37 CFR § 1.196(b).
As indicated supra, this decision contains a new ground of
rejection pursuant to 37 CFR § 1.196(b) (amended effective
December 1, 1997, by final rule notice, 62 Fed. Reg 53131, 53197
(October 10, 1997), 1203 Off. Gaz. Pat, Office 63, 122 (October
21, 1997)). 37 CFR § 1.196(b) provides that, "[a] new ground of
rejection shall not be considered final for the purposes of
judicial review."
37 CFR § 1.196(b) also provides that the Appellants, WITHIN
TWO MONTHS FROM THE DATE OF THE DECISION, must exercise one of
the following two options with respect to the new grounds of
10
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