Appeal No. 95-4609
Application 08/263,903
main deficiencies in the prior art combination applied by the
examiner.
Appellants’ first noted deficiency is that none of the
applied prior art teaches the step of “determining the number of
non-performances occurring during each of a plurality of non-
uniform length, non-performance measurement intervals by
computing the average of the non-performances over multiple
uniform intervals” [brief, pages 5-7]. It would be useful to
consider what this step means in relationship to the disclosed
invention.
The specification uses the example of fifteen minutes,
one hour, four hours and twenty-four hours as the plurality of
non-uniform length, non-performance measurement intervals. The
uniform interval in the disclosed example is fifteen minutes.
The step quoted above means that the number of failures measured
during a fifteen minute interval is used to compute an average
number of failures over the one hour, four hour and twenty-four
hour measurement intervals. Thus, the actual number of failures
measured during one interval is used to compute the average
number of failures over a plurality of different intervals. This
technique is said to reduce the effects of noise when compared to
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