Appeal No. 96-0517
Application 08/264,473
offsets are produced in the operating point for some
reason or other. [Spec. at 25:14-23.]
As evidence of the obviousness of the subject matter of
claims 14-17, the examiner cites the admitted prior art shown
in appellants' Figure 22 in view of
Feldt 5,200,655 April 6, 1993
(filed June 3, 1991)
With respect to claim 18, the examiner additionally cites
Asazawa 5,150,076 Sept. 22, 1992
(filed June 24, 1991)
The prior art playback circuit shown in appellants'
Figure 22 satisfies all of the limitations of claim 14 except
that the voltage-to-current converting means (i.e., gm
amplifier 24) is not disclosed as having an exponential
input/output function. For this feature, the examiner cites
Feldt, which discloses temperature-independent exponential
amplifiers which may be used, for example, to convert linear-
scaled signals to decibel-scaled signals in communication
systems (col. 1, lines 6-21). The examiner specifically
relies on Feldt's Figure 3, which shows a voltage-to-current
converter 108 connected to an exponential amplifier circuit
- 6 -
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007