Appeal No. 94-4400
Application 07/771,063
10 in a manner which would relieve the examiner of the burden of
explaining why this distinction between the claimed invention and
the applied prior art would have been obvious to the artisan. We
view the distinction as pointed out by appellants to be real and
worthy of an appropriate analysis within the meaning of Section
103. Since the examiner basically has not treated this
distinction as a difference between the claimed invention and the
applied prior art at all, we conclude that the applied prior art
and the analysis provide by the examiner fail to establish a
prima facie case of the obviousness of claim 10. Therefore, we
do not sustain the rejection of claims 10-12.
With respect to claim 13, the key recitations reside in
clause (b)(2). Appellants argue that the method of claim 13
precludes a higher priority node from taking control away from a
node that already properly has the primary status. Appellants
argue that the scheme in Literati always transfers control back
to a higher priority control node whenever it is brought back on
line, and thus Literati actually teaches away from the claimed
invention [brief, pages 11-12]. The examiner explains the
operation of the priority scheme in Literati but does not
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