Appeal No. 2006-0621
Application No. 09/938,237
of Miyawaki with the teachings of Yamanaka. Appellants note that
absent a proper motivation to combine the references, there is no
prima facie case of obviousness [reply brief].
We will not sustain the examiner’s rejection of claims 1, 3,
6, 7, 10, 11 and 21 because we agree with appellants that the
record in this case fails to establish a prima facie case of
obviousness. Although Miyawaki discloses a document processing
system of the type recited in the claimed invention, Miyawaki
fails to disclose how the various components, such as the marking
engine and the resources, are interconnected. Miyawaki only
vaguely teaches that serial communication units 16 communicate
information with a document feeder, document finisher, and the
like [column 4, lines 8-11]. There is no description whatsoever
of the manner in which these elements are interconnected. There
is also no description in Miyawaki of any synchronization between
these elements. The examiner simply asserts that some general
synchronization would be required for proper operation of the
system. Thus, the concept of synchronization is totally lacking
in Miyawaki, but the examiner asserts that synchronization would
be necessary in Miyawaki. The examiner proposes to modify the
synchronization of Miyawaki, which, as noted above, is not
8
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007