Appeal No. 96-0209
Application 07/922,501
regard elements 30, 31 and 32 of the European '073 reference as
the appellants' claimed music information reproduction means.
Also, on this record, the examiner has not identified anything in
the European '073 reference sufficient to constitute the
appellants' claimed control information reproduction means, if
elements 30, 31 and 32 of the European '073 reference were
regarded as the music information reproduction means. Also, in
our view, in the context of the European '073 reference, a
corresponding music information reproduction means would have to
comprise the series of components leading down the other path
from demodulation circuit 10, i.e., elements 20-25 or a
subcombination thereof (Figure 3), and not the processing path
containing elements 30, 31 and 32.
With respect to claim 1, the European '073 reference does
not disclose any part which controls a reproduction sequence of
the music information from the music information reproduction
means. The appellants correctly state (Br. at 19-20):
The EP '073 patent does not disclose control means for
controlling the reproduction sequence of music
information in accordance with the clock signal. The
writing clock w is alleged to be the control
information produced by control reproduction means 31
and applied to controller 33. However, the writing
clock signal w merely controls the timing at which MIDI
data generated in decoder 31 is written to memory 32.
Elements 20-25 of the EP '073 patent perform the
function of decoding the encoded music information to
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