Appeal No. 97-1057
Application 08/160,298
rejection under 35 U.S.C. § 103, an examiner is under a burden
to make out a prima facie case of obviousness. If that burden
is met, the burden of going forward then shifts to the
applicant to overcome the prima facie case with argument
and/or evidence. Obviousness is then determined on the basis
of the evidence as a whole and the relative persuasiveness of
the arguments. See In re Oetiker, 977 F.2d 1443, 1445, 24
USPQ2d 1443, 1444 (Fed. Cir. 1992); In re Hedges, 783 F.2d
1038, 1039, 228 USPQ 685, 686 (Fed. Cir. 1986); In re
Piasecki, 745 F.2d 1468, 1472, 223 USPQ 785, 788 (Fed. Cir.
1984); and In re Rinehart, 531 F.2d 1048, 1052, 189 USPQ 143,
147 (CCPA 1976).
We now consider the rejection of claim 1 as
unpatentable over Chu and Vassiliadis. Claims 11-13, 39, 42,
51, 52 and 80 are not separately argued and have been grouped
with claim 1. The examiner has pointed out that Chu teaches
an ALU which performs mixed arithmetic and logical operations
on three inputs received at the ALU. The examiner indicates
that Chu does not teach the claimed operations performed only
on the first and second inputs and on the first and third
inputs [answer, pages 4-6]. The examiner cites Vassiliadis to
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