Appeal No. 1995-5010
Application 08/116,261
These claims are rejected as being obvious over
Takahashi, Wilson and Ams. We treat the independent claim 1
first. With respect to this claim, the Examiner states:
Takahashi thus lacks an additional limiter
(connected to the output of comparing means 56), and
a loop filter, and explicit showing of a tuning
inductor in parallel with a voltage source amplifier
within driving circuitry 22. However, the first two
elements are very common in the art and would have
been obvious in order to provide smoothness and
stability to the feedback signals. Likewise, to
combine the Wilson teaching of employing a parallel
inductor so as to counter the capacitance of the
piezoelectric transducer 1 or 2 would have been
obvious from Wilson’s disclosure on utilizing a
parallel tuning inductor in conjunction with "the
most common situation of driving from a constant
voltage source" (... ) and would have been motivated
by Takahashi’s expositions on the transducer
equivalent circuit (Figure. 10(b)) [final rejection,
pages 4 to 5].
We note that the Examiner recognizes that Takahashi does
not show the claimed limiter but alleges that it would have
been obvious to incorporate such along with a smoothing filter
in Takahashi. No evidence, based on either a prior art
reference or technological reasoning, is presented to support
-7-
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