Appeal No. 1996-4200
Application No. 08/330,341
transistors, the appellants argue (Brief, page 14) that
Leipold "does not show either depletion MOSFETs [claims 1 and
4] or the gate and source terminals of the first and third
MOSFETs being interconnected [claim 4]." In summary,
appellants argue (Brief, page 17) that the teachings and
suggestions of Van Zeghbroeck may not be combined with those
of Leipold because there is no "teaching or suggestion to do
so."
We agree with appellants that the examiner has not
pointed to anything in the record or presented a convincing
line of reasoning that would buttress his conclusions
concerning the combinability of the disparate teachings in the
applied references. Although Van Zeghbroeck discloses
depletion-type FETs 30 and 36' (Figure 3) with gate terminals
connected to drain/source terminals, the examiner has not
provided any explanation as to how such circuit structure
would be implemented in Leipold without adverse changes to the
operation of the Leipold comparator. Even if we assume for
the sake of argument that it would have been obvious to the
skilled artisan to combine the teachings of the applied
references, the combined teachings would still lack "all of
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