Appeal No. 95-4714
Application No. 08/046,476
required by the claim. In fact, such context identification
information would appear to be superfluous in Stiffler's system,
wherein only one context runs at a time on a workstation and
wherein the "valid" bit in the block status memory "indicates
whether the contents of the associated block are valid in the
present context (associated with the program presently running in
MPU 210)" (col. 9, lines 27-31). The examiner also has not
explained, and it is not apparent to us, why Freeman obviates the
foregoing shortcoming of Stiffler. Consequently, we cannot
sustain the § 103 rejection of claim 17 or its dependent claims
18-22 as unpatentable over Stiffler in view of Freeman. For the
same reason, we cannot sustain the rejection of independent claim
23 and its dependent claims 24-27 over those references.
As a result, we do not reach the question of whether the
examiner it is correct to argue that it would have been obvious
to modify Stiffler so as to employ protection bits of the types
disclosed in Freeman order to achieve increased data integrity
and security (Answer at sec. 9), thereby satisfying claim 17's
requirement that the tag element include a "write allowed" bit
and a "protection" bit.
* * *
This decision contains new grounds of rejection entered
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