Appeal No. 96-3366
Application 08/292,700
one is reaching the fringe of a transmitter’s coverage area, one would be similarly
motivated to monitor error rates because an increase in the noise (indicating a
corresponding decrease in signal strength) which bleeds through your signal indicates
that your [sic] reaching said transmitter’s limit.
After consideration of the positions and arguments presented by both the examiner and the
appellants, we have concluded that the rejection should not be sustained.
The examiner’s rejection of claims 1-8 involves an obviousness modification of the prior art to
Marui. To sustain such a rejection, there must be some teaching or suggestion to make the alleged
obvious modification. In re Fritch, 972 F.2d 1260, 1266, 23 USPQ2d 1780, 1783-84 (Fed. Cir.
1992). There is simply no teaching or suggestion in Marui to monitor error correction of received
digital signals because Marui discloses an analog system, and in analog systems, bit error correction is
not performed. It is only in digital systems that bit error correction is performed. Furthermore, as
taught by appellants, an analog system provides a sufficient “warning” area prior to reaching an out-of-
range location but a digital system does not. See appellants’ Figure 3. Being directed to an analog
system, Marui’s device does not encounter this problem nor does the reference recognize this problem
in digital systems.
Because Marui does not teach the above error correction, there is also no teaching or
suggestion to generate a controlled simulated analog RF channel noise signal when the results of the
error correction exceeds a first predetermined threshold.
Even assuming the examiner is correct that Marui can be modified to the extent that bit error
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