Appeal No. 96-3944
Application 08/041,543
With regard to claim 9, this claim brings in the
"residual electricity detecting circuit" and appellant argues
[page 10 of the principal brief] that the applied prior art fails
to teach anything that "even approaches this circuit." However,
as we apply Meinhold to the broad language of claim 9, in our
view, Meinhold does, indeed, disclose that which is claimed. As
above, we treat the claimed capacitors as obvious equivalents to
the battery cells of Meinhold. Looking at either Figure 4 or 5
of Meinhold, taking Figure 4 as exemplary, Meinhold discloses a
circuit which protects cells from overcharging or overdischarging
but before a full charge is reached, for example, the energy, or
electricity, within the storage device may be considered
"residual electricity," as claimed. The term "residual" does not
appear to add much substance to the claim but, to the extent that
it does, it may be considered an amount of a quantity remaining.
Thus, Meinhold implicitly has some "residual electricity" in the
battery cells during charging and/or discharging and the
detecting circuit, which detects the overcharge condition, for
example, may then be considered to be a "residual electricity-
detecting circuit," as claimed. Referring to Figure 5 of
Meinhold, that detection circuit comprises applying the voltage
across each cell (i.e., capacitor) 4 to a series combination of a
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