Appeal No. 96-3205
Application No. 08/157,198
view that appellants’ argument in this regard is misplaced
since the monitoring step d) makes no reference to either
setting or determining the state of the flag. Hence, we do
not view the examiner’s rationale as reading step d) out of
the claim as appellants appear to suggest. The problem here
seems to stem from appellants’ assumption that step c) of
claim 51 requires setting the flag in response to a start bit,
which it does not. If step c) did, indeed, include that
language, then, perhaps, appellants’ argument would have more
credence because then step d), reciting the step of an
information entity being “detected during receipt of said
start bit,” would have a connection to the preceding step c).
As claim 51 is presently written, we do not find appellants’
argument regarding the setting and determining the state of
the flag to be persuasive.
However, we do find persuasive appellants’ argument
regarding the claimed monitoring at a “monitoring rate
sufficiently high so that receipt of one of said information
entities is immediately detected during receipt of said start
bit.” While we agree with the examiner that there is nothing
in the claim which would require the setting of a flag in
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