Appeal No. 1996-3391 Page 10
Application No. 08/160,573
reasonable analysis as to why the shift control, as broadly
recited in the claims, would have been obvious to the artisan
in view of the applied prior art. Appellants argue that Ing-
Simmons fails to provide for such a shift control and they
further argue, with regard to Chu, that Chu “clearly shows that
control of additional structures, namely source mux 136 and
swap mux 138, are required for control of whether the shift is
left or right” [principal brief-page 9]. As broadly claimed,
it matters not from where the control signal comes and, in our
view, the artisan would have found it obvious to apply either a
data signal or a control signal to the shift control input of
the Chu shifter. Whatever controls the direction and amount of
shift in Chu can be considered as the claimed shift control
input. Further, the artisan would have found it obvious that
any bit at the shift control input can be the directional
control bit, including the most significant bit. Accordingly,
we will sustain the rejection of claims 2, 3, 13 and 14 under
35 U.S.C. 103.
We now turn to claim 9, with which claim 20 stands or
falls. Claim 9 depends from claim 1 and recites that a
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