Appeal No. 96-0137
Application 08/074,978
The Rejection under 35 U.S.C. §103
Claims 9-12
With respect to claims 9-12, appellants contend that the following specific features of the claims
establish their unobviousness. Appellants argue that “LOG/iC’s PLD Database program” of the
LOG/iC PLD Compiler Manual does not provide for a price information feature. Appellants contend
that the art applied by the examiner teaches manual partitioning, not the required automatic partitioning.
According to appellants, “fitting”, as taught in their application and as claimed, means automatically
assigning input and output pins to the device in such a manner as to provide a means of successfully
implementing a design into a selected device, and the prior art does not teach automatic “fitting”.
Lastly, appellants contend that the prior art does not teach producing a list of devices that comprises an
ordered list of solutions.
After consideration of the positions and arguments presented by appellants, we have concluded
that the rejection of claims 9-12 should be sustained. With respect to appellants’ first argument, noted
above and related to pricing information, in the reference to Small in the paragraph bridging sheets 3
and 4, it is disclosed that “HP’s HP PLD and Minc’s Logic Designer take into consideration such
device-specific factors as power consumption, pricing, and inventory restrictions when making an
automatic device selection. As to appellants’ second and third arguments, in the first full paragraph of
the second sheet of Small, it is disclosed that software packages that can select devices and partition
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