Appeal No. 97-1320
Application 08/431,001
discharged through said resistor when said current source
is turned off to establish a turn-off slew rate of said
output pulses which matches said desired turn-on slew
rate.
The Examiner relies on the admitted prior art in
Appellants' figure 1 and the following reference:
Sedra, Adel S., and Smith, Kenneth C., Microelectronic
Circuits, Saunders College Publishing (3d ed. 1991),
pages 241-43, 434-36 (hereinafter "Sedra & Smith").
Claims 1-5 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as
being unpatentable over the admitted prior art and
Sedra & Smith. The Examiner finds that the admitted prior art
of figure 1 teaches all the claimed features except for the
constant current source. The Examiner notes that the
disclosed constant current source is provided by a transistor
with an emitter resistor and finds that transistors with
emitter resistors were well known in the art as evidenced by
Sedra & Smith. The Examiner concludes that "it would have
been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time
of the invention to add an emitter resistor to the input
circuit (thereby turning it into a current source) of
Appellants' Prior Art for the purpose of stabilizing the power
modulator against power supply fluctuations" (First Office
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