Appeal No. 95-2433
Application No. 08/076,080
determined by currents I1 and I2 and the voltage on terminal
OUT floats to a level which supplies IO under varying load
conditions whereas the second MOS transistor of claim 16 has
its source coupled to the I/O terminal. Accordingly, the
current through the second MOS transistor will vary.
We are unpersuaded by appellant’s arguments since
appellant has derived a circuit (Figure 5 in the request for
rehearing) completely by bodily incorporation of elements
without considering the level of skill of the artisan in
determining the obviousness of the instant claimed subject
matter as a whole. One must look to what the art, as a whole,
would have suggested to the skilled artisan and not merely to
what a resulting circuit would look like by physically
substituting one element for another in a sequential manner.
With regard to the first argument, transistor Q3 of
Nagano has its collector, which is equivalent to the source of
a MOS transistor, coupled to the terminal OUT.
With regard to the second argument, transistor Q3 of
Nagano has its emitter, which is equivalent to the drain of a
MOS transistor, coupled to current mirror circuit 11.
With regard to appellant’s third argument, as we
explained in our decision, at pages 4-5, while Nagano does
3
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007