Appeal No. 97-1057
Application 08/160,298
together. Claim 2 depends from claim 1 and recites that the
shifter performs a right shift or a left shift based on the
digital state of a predetermined bit of the shift control
signal. Claim 3 depends from claim 2 and recites that the
predetermined bit is the most significant bit of the shift
control signal. The examiner has provided a reasonable
analysis as to why the shift control, as broadly recited in
claims 2 and 3, would have been obvious to the artisan in view
of the applied prior art. Appellants argue that Chu does not
teach that a predetermined bit of a control bus should be used
to control the shift direction because Chu uses a bit of the
data buses to carry out this shift direction control. The
examiner responds that it does not matter where the control
signal comes from, and the artisan would have found it obvious
to apply either a data signal or a control signal to the shift
control input of the Chu shifter. We agree. Whatever input
controls the direction and amount of shift in Chu can be
considered as the claimed shift control input. The artisan
would have found it obvious that any bit at the shift control
input can be the directional control bit, including the most
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