Appeal No. 1997-0274
Application No. 08/266,912
signal without increasing the capacitance of and therefor the size of the capacitor.”
(See brief at pages 5-6.) Clearly, the individual prior art references applied by the
Examiner have not recognized this advantage nor has the Examiner set forth a line of
reasoning for the combination to have recognized an advantage. The mere fact that the
skilled artisan would achieve the “additive result” does not make it prima facie obvious to
combine the teachings as the Examiner asserts. Some motivation to achieve this additive
result must be in the prior art or from the common sense or from known engineering
knowledge.
The prior art references are silent with respect to the details of the oscillator or the
speed of operation. Moreover, the Examiner has not set forth any additional rationale
beyond the mere conclusion that the combination would have been obvious and that the
additive result would have been achieved. The Examiner did not set forth any additional
line of reasoning such as the relationship between frequency and size of capacitance, the
desire to read/write at a faster rate to increase clock speed or the cost of increasing the
speed of the clock as a consideration by the skilled artisan. Therefore, the Examiner has
not set forth a prima facie case of obviousness. Therefore, we will not sustain the rejection
of claims 1-5.
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