Appeal No. 1997-1636 Page 10
Application No. 08/204,996
The appellants err in considering the references
individually. “Non-obviousness cannot be established by
attacking references individually where the rejection is based
upon the teachings of a combination of references.” In re
Merck & Co., 800 F.2d 1091, 1097, 231 USPQ 375, 380 (Fed. Cir.
1986) (citing In re Keller, 642 F.2d 413, 425, 208 USPQ 871,
881 (CCPA 1981)). In determining obviousness, furthermore,
references are read not in isolation but for what they fairly
teach in combination with the prior art as a whole. Id., 231
USPQ at 380. Here, the rejection is based on the combination
of Lawton and Nogi. As aforementioned, Lawton teaches a
plurality of interconnections. Each interconnection is
supervised by a data transfer cell 12. Col. 3, ll. 30-40. As
shown in Figures 1 and 2, Nogi uses busses as interconnections
between processors. When the busses taught by Nogi are used
to interconnect the processing cells taught by Lawton, the
resulting combination would have suggested the “plurality of
busses, each bus supervised by a supervisory processor” and
the processors connected to the busses as claimed.
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