Appeal No. 96-1857
Application No. 08/340,435
because claim 6 also requires that there be a means under the
control of the central controller for “routing audio and video
signals between said plurality of audio video apparatus.” The
typical controller within a VCR would not control the routing
of audio and video signals between other audio video
apparatus. In any event, there is no evidence of record to
this effect.
With regard to the rejection actually before us, we
cannot sustain the rejection because, in our view, the
examiner has not met the initial burden to establish a prima
facie case of obviousness of the claimed subject matter.
The examiner recognized that Miyagawa did not teach an
audio-visual component with a timer wherein timing signals are
sent to a central controller in order to control selected
audio video apparatus. Therefore, the examiner relied on Ide
for the teaching of controlling the operation of audio video
components at a predetermined time. It is unclear how the
examiner is combining these teachings to arrive at the claimed
subject matter but the examiner appears to rely on more than
the mere teachings of the references because, at page 5 of the
answer, the examiner contends that “it would be likely that
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