Appeal No. 2005-2753
Application No. 09/730,238
have, indeed, based our conclusion of obviousness on the objective evidence of record.
As we explained, with regard to claim 11, for example, Figure 3 of Herwig discloses a
housing 110, a power supply 112 enclosed in the housing, a bus hub 114 enclosed in the
housing, a downstream receptacle (the rectangular box at the top of 110, into which lines
106, 136, and 138 are connected) connected to both the power supply 112 and the bus hub
114, and wherein the downstream receptacle is coupled to a cable 90, 94 to couple power
from the power supply 112 and data signals from the bus hub 114 to the cable, 90, 94, and to
receive power and data signals from the cable 90, 94. In fact, the only portion of claim 1 not
explicitly described by Herwig is that the power supply is coupled to the bus hub to supply
power to the bus hub. But, it would have been clear to artisans that Herwig’s bus hub 114
must receive power from some source in order to operate. It may very well be through cable
90, 94, since the cable is shown as being connected to “INTERFACE TO TERMINAL
(POWER, LAN, AND USB),” but the power must be supplied from some power source.
In addition to the knowledge that the USB hub of Herwig must receive power from
some source, Flannery described a power source for USB devices wherein such devices were
“self-powered.” See, for example, Figure 1A of Flannery wherein a remote hub is shown as
having its own internal power source 108. Thus, the objective evidence provided by Herwig
and Flannery established that a USB hub may have either an external or an internal power
source. With this explicit knowledge provided by the applied references, the artisan viewing
1 We take claim 1 as representative of the other claims of Group I (claims 1-4, 7, 11, 12, 16, 17, 19, 28-32, 39,
and 41-43) since appellant does not argue these claims separately from one another and the claims will therefore
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