Appeal No. 95-1865
Application 07/970,816
It is our view that the examiner’s rationale and conclusion can only be the product of
impermissible hindsight gleaned from appellant’s own disclosure. This, of course, is not a proper
basis for a conclusion of obviousness under 35 U.S.C. § 103.
While it may very well be known to phase-offset the phases of two clocks of signals to be
time division multiplexed, as the examiner contends, this does not equate to a reason why the
skilled artisan would have been led to provide phase offset in the prior art depicted in instant
Figures 1-4. The examiner states that the reason is “so that both signals from two different
channels could timeshare a single analog-to-digital (A/D/) converter.” But where is the
suggestion that a single A/D converter should be timeshared by both signals? That suggestion
comes from appellant, not from any prior art of record.
The examiner also relies on Hayashi for teaching the synchronization of a master clock
with a reference clock and seeks to incorporate the network synchronization system of Hayashi
into the prior art of Figures 1-4 as modified by the examiner in order to enable the phase of the
master clock to be adjusted synchronously “with all transceivers within the first and second
channel media with the phase of the clock of the first channel medium… phased-offset [sic] from
the phase of the second channel medium” [answer-page 5].
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