Appeal 2007-1326
Application 10/237,067
1 The Appellants contend that the Examiner’s proposed modification is wholly
2 unsupported by the cited prior art, and utterly lacks the requisite motivation and
3 enablement from the prior art to make a proper modification. The Appellants point
4 out that the problems related to noise referenced by Young are specifically directed
5 to a control signal received by the train. These problems are associated with
6 picking-up an encoded control signal at a moving train through sliding contacts,
7 whereby the encoded control signal can be lost, altered, etc., in the noisy
8 environment. The Appellants compare this to Ireland, in which the communication
9 from the train is based on a simple process by which the train "shorts" the track to
10 create current pulses which can be easily detected by a fixed sensor, immune from
11 the same aforementioned problems associated with any noise or movement at the
12 pick-up point. (Appeal Br. 9-10; Reply Br. 4-7).
13 The Appellants conclude that although Young may suggest RF signaling to the
14 train for "eliminating noise and connection problems," such a motivation is not
15 relevant when transmitting signals from the train in the manner disclosed by
16 Ireland. Young's motivation is disclosed as being related only to signals going to
17 the train, without any evidence on the record that such noise/connection problems
18 would likewise exist for signals transmitted from a train in the manner disclosed by
19 Ireland. (Appeal Br. 10).
20 The Appellants further contend that converting the electromagnetic scheme of
21 Young to function bi-directionally would face design problems that need to be
22 overcome for converting a receive only device to a transceiver, entailing space
23 considerations, power considerations, and receiver protection problems. Further,
24 the code to transmit is substantially different than code for receiving and that
25 Ireland has relatively simple responses or acknowledgements, whereas it is a big
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