Appeal No. 95-4937
Application 08/017,088
After careful consideration of the claimed subject matter and the evidence of
obviousness, along with the arguments of both appellants and the examiner, we conclude
that the examiner has failed to establish a prima facie case of obviousness and we will not
sustain the rejection of claims 1 through 7 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 based on the evidence
provided by the applied references.
Independent claim 1 is very specific in claiming the communication of a message
over a “multi-stage network” with the network “routing the message directly and only to
said at least one receiving node based upon the indicator for selecting at least one
receiving node.” The claim also calls for the receiving node to determine whether to
perform a “destination checking” based on the indicator for selecting destination checking.
Independent claim 7 is even more specific in reciting the actual bits included in the
indicator.
The examiner applies Sindhu as showing “all the claimed method of operating a
communication network to improve the networks [sic, network’s] throughput” [answer-
page 3], citing column 18, lines 37-50 of Sindhu. Recognizing that Sindhu does not
disclose the disclosed system as being applicable to a “multi stage routing network”
[answer-page 4], the examiner cites APA and concludes that it would have been obvious
“to have utilized the packet communication technique taught by Sindhu in a multi-stage
network to provide a network with greatly improved throughput” [answer-page 4].
While we may not go so far as appellants in labeling Sindhu “nonanalogous art,”
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