Appeal No. 96-3101
Application 08/020,570
European Patent Application 220 367 048 Oct. 21, 1989
Appealed claims 1 through 30 stand rejected under 35
U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over the cited European
patent document. The examiner’s main position is that the
threshold value switch recited in claim 1 does not distinguish
from the transistor 16 in each of the image point addressing
circuits in the European patent document (see pages 4 and 5 of
the answer). In particular, the examiner has made the
following findings with regard to this reference:
European patent 367 048 contains a circuit
similar to applicant’s for controlling
activated regions of a print form. As shown
in figure 2, each region of the surface
matrix is addressable by specific voltage
applications to the appropriate transistor.
The transistors act as switches to each
point on the matrix while the capacitors
are used to store a charge that indicates
that the given point is activated. All
points that are ?activated? will attract and
2 According to the PTO translation branch, U.S. Patent No. 5,109,240 (copy
attached), which has now been cited by the examiner on page 2 of his answer in this
appeal, is the equivalent of this European patent document. Our understanding of the
European patent document is based on Patent No. 5,109,240.
3
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