Appeal No. 96-1774
Application No. 07822,207
particular responder. Unlike Johansson, Carsten’s moving bodies
do not respond after different durations.
The rejection
Claims 9, 10, 15, and 16 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103 as unpatentable over Johansson and Carsten. The claims all
require that the identification signal transmitted by the moving
body comprise data corresponding to the delay in responding to
the initialization signal.
The examiner interprets “data” broadly to include the delay
itself. Such an interpretation would render the independent
claims anticipated by Johansson. Appellants argue that the
content, not the timing, of the signal must contain the data
corresponding to the delay. We agree with Appellants.
In the claimed invention, the identification signal
comprises (is made up of at least) data corresponding to the
duration value. In Johansson, the signal transmitted at the end
of the duration is not made up of any data. Every signal is the
same, differing only in the timing.
This is a significant difference between Johansson and the
claimed subject matter. We discern no suggestion in the prior
art to modify Johansson by including corresponding data in the
signal that is transmitted at the end of the variable duration.
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