Appeal No. 96-0908
Application 08/160,118
rejections of claim 7 and 19, and their dependent claims 40
and 42, are reversed.
(7) Claims 8 and 20
(8) Claims 9 and 21
Claims 8 and 20 recite that the data registers are
accessed via consecutive register numbers, where the register
pair conditional store instruction designates the first
register by register number and the second register is
accessed by a consecutive register number. While the intent
of the claims is that the second register does not have to be
designated in the instruction, the claims do not preclude the
instruction designating the second register.
Diefendorff does not specify the format of the
CONDITIONAL-STORE instruction. The examiner states (FR6):
"Finally, a specific register numbering, i.e. in claims
8,9,20,21, not explicitly taught by the cited arts would have
been an obvious engineering design choice to a skilled
artisan." Design choice is not a substitute for evidence or
obviousness reasoning based on what was known to those of
ordinary skill in the art. The examiner could have provided
examples of other types of instructions that used consecutive
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