Appeal No. 96-1286
Application 08/259,360
S. Ct. 80 (1996). The appellant is correct that merely citing
a reference which describes a similar generic goal is not
sufficient to obviate the specific limitations of the
appellants’ claimed invention.
Independent claims 5, 9, and 13 are apparatus claims and
do not recite the method steps discussed above in connection
with the deficiencies in the examiner’s findings. However,
they each recite a specific look-up table architecture
implementing a plurality of logical functions. And like claim
1, they each require the implementation of multi-variable
logical functions, output states each representing the logical
function responses for a particular set of input variables and
programmable architecture elements each for storing the
responses of a particular output state. More importantly,
they each recite a limit on the number of programmable
architecture which is less than that necessary for
implementing a look-up table capable of performing all
possible logic functions of the plurality of input variables.
In that regard, claims 9 and 13 require at least three input
terminals but no more than four programmable architecture
elements (claim 9) or programmable static random-access-memory
10
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007