Appeal No. 95-4957
Application 07/950,979
As indicated by the cases just cited, the examiner has at
least two responsibilities in setting forth a rejection under 35
U.S.C. § 103. First, the examiner must identify all the
differences between the claimed invention and the teachings of
the prior art. Second, the examiner must explain why the
identified differences would have resulted from an obvious
modification of the prior art.
With respect to independent claim 1, the examiner has
read the claim on Kronstadt, and has concluded that the only
difference between claim 1 and Kronstadt is that Kronstadt does
not specifically teach using bidirectional latching transceivers
[answer, page 7]. The examiner asserts that the bidirectional
buffers of Kronstadt are well known equivalents of bidirectional
latching transceivers, and the examiner maintains that the
substitution of one for the other would have been obvious to the
artisan. Appellants argue that there are several other
differences between claim 1 and Kronstadt which have been ignored
by the examiner. We will consider each of these alleged
differences in turn and the arguments of the examiner in support
of the conclusion of obviousness.
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