Appeal No. 97-1694
Application 08/351,064
circuited), there is, by definition, no current flowing in the
bus since there is no current path between the bus and the
supply voltage or between the bus and ground. This is also
true of the admitted prior art of figure 3; when transistors
13 and 14 are OFF, there is no current flowing in the bus.
Appellants have not shown that current flows in the bus of IBM
when there is no signal. Therefore, the rejection of claims
40 and 55 is sustained.
Claims 41 and 43
Claim 41 recites that "a sum of forward direction
threshold voltages of the first and second non-linear elements
are greater than a difference between the termination voltage
and the voltage carried via the voltage line and lower than
the termination voltage." Appellants argue (Br10):
It can be seen from Fig. 3 of the IBM TDB reference
that a current flows from the p-channel transistor to the
n-channel transistor even when no signal is transmitted
via the transfer line. The graph of Fig. 3 shows a
current flows from the p-channel transistor to the
n-channel transistor even when the voltage described in
the horizontal line of the graph is zero.
We do not agree with this reasoning. Figure 3 is a graph of
current in the PMOS or NMOS device versus the voltage at the
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