Appeal No. 95-1955
Application 08/109,982
under 35 U.S.C. § 112, second paragraph.
The rejection of claims 10-12 as
being obvious under 35 U.S.C. § 103
We do not sustain the rejection of claims 10-12 under
35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over Nibby and Hill.
The examiner found as follows (answer at 3):
To test a data store's memory segment, Nibby, Jr. et
al's method performs a test on each storage location
associated with each addressable location of the memory
segment. After each addressable location in a memory
segment has been tested, the results of these tests is
used to determine whether or not the entire segment of
the data store is good or bad. If the memory segment
of the data store contains at least one bad addressable
location, then that entire segment of the data store is
marked as bad. Otherwise that segment of the data
store is marked as good. The results of this
determination is then used to create a bit map buffer,
which inherently has two states, i.e., a state
representing a good area and the alternative state
representing a bad area.
None of the foregoing is disputed by the appellant.
However, two issues are in apparent dispute. First, the claimed
invention requires that the bit map buffer be contained in a data
store of a non-volatile memory. Secondly, the claimed invention
recites that the cyclic redundancy code CRC is calculated only
for those data stores whose corresponding first data in the bit
map are in a first state and not for all data stores.
The appellant correctly asserts (Br. at 11-12) that Nibby
puts its bit map in a static RAM which is a volatile memory,
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