Appeal No. 96-3494
Application 08/160,299
We now consider the rejection of claims 1, 7-10 and
16-33 under 35 U.S.C. § 103. As a general proposition in an
appeal involving a rejection under 35 U.S.C. § 103, an
examiner is under a burden to make out a prima facie case of
obviousness. If that burden is met, the burden of going
forward then shifts to the applicant to overcome the prima
facie case with argument and/or evidence. Obviousness is then
determined on the basis of the evidence as a whole and the
relative persuasiveness of the arguments. See In re Oetiker,
977 F.2d 1443, 1445, 24 USPQ2d 1443, 1444 (Fed. Cir. 1992); In
re Hedges, 783 F.2d 1038, 1039, 228 USPQ 685, 686 (Fed. Cir.
1986); In re Piasecki, 745 F.2d 1468, 1472, 223 USPQ 785, 788
(Fed. Cir. 1984); and In re Rinehart, 531 F.2d 1048, 1052, 189
USPQ 143, 147 (CCPA 1976).
We now consider the rejection of claim 1 as
unpatentable over Chu and Vassiliadis. Claims 9, 10, 18 and
31-33 are grouped with claim 1 and will stand or fall with
claim 1 [brief, page 3]. The examiner has pointed out that
Chu teaches an ALU which performs mixed arithmetic and logical
operations on three inputs received at the ALU. The examiner
indicates that Chu does not teach the claimed operations
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