Appeal No. 96-3205
Application No. 08/157,198
transmitted or the subsequent testing of that flag. The
examiner counters with the argument that the argument is not
commensurate in scope with the claimed invention. More
particularly, the examiner contends that claim 51 requires
only that the flag be set after one of the subscribers
receives one of the information entities and that the set flag
indicates only receipt of an information entity by the
subscriber. This does not, necessarily, entail the setting of
the flag “in response to a start bit,” as argued by
appellants. Thus, the flag may be set in response to any part
of the information entity, or message. That being the case,
we agree with the examiner that since Ryckeboer teaches the
transmission of a message if no transmission is detected on
the bus, and claim 51 does not require setting the flag in
response to a start bit, but only in response to any part of a
message, this teaching by Ryckeboer of transmitting only if
the bus is idle is equivalent to setting a flag and then
checking as to the status of the flag.
Appellants take exception to this position, arguing in
the reply brief that under this interpretation there would be
no reason to include step d) in claim 51. However, it is our
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