Appeal No. 96-1979
Application 08/041,770
Stiffler et al. 4,608,631 Aug. 26, 1986
Ely et al. 5,003,464 Mar. 26, 1991
Claims 1, 3 through 13 and 15 through 24 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103. As evidence
of obviousness, the examiner cites Ely with regard to claims 1 and 13, adding Stiffler with regard to the
dependent claims 3 through 12 and 15 through 24.
Reference is made to the briefs and answer for the respective positions of appellants and the
examiner.
OPINION
We reverse.
Turning to the rejection of the independent claims 1 and 13 under 35 U.S.C. 103 as
unpatentable over Ely, the examiner recognizes that Ely fails to disclose the writing of a tag to each
processor but takes Official notice that writing data to multiple stores of a multi-processor system to
maintain data consistency is well known and concludes that it would have been obvious to modify Ely
“with a means of distributing the status information stored in a single register to multi-storage devices of
each processors [sic]” [final rejection - page 3], the motivation being to “enhance the reliability and fault
tolerance of the multi-processing system” [final rejection - page 4].
The motivation ascribed by the examiner to the skilled artisan appears to have resulted from
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