Appeal No. 1997-0837
Application 08/121,116
with regard to the propriety of these rejections are set forth in
the examiner’s answer (Paper No. 14) and the appellant’s brief
(Paper No. 12) and reply brief (Paper No. 15).
Appellant’s Invention
Appellant’s invention is adequately set forth at pages 3-6 of
the brief.
Opinion
After consideration of the positions and arguments presented
by both the examiner and the appellant, we have concluded that the
rejection of independent claims 4 and 15 should not be sustained.
With respect to claims 4 and 15, the examiner observes that
Darling discloses the implementation of sensory neural network
photodetector arrays and relies upon the theory to the effect that
in combining the teachings of Darling and Shibata, each neuron
MOSFET (Shibata) would inherently have a gate coupled to its
corresponding photoelectric conversion element. However, in
relying on the principle of inherency, the examiner must provide a
basis in fact and/or technical reasoning to support the
determination that the allegedly inherent characteristic
necessarily flows from the teachings of the applied prior art. In
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