Appeal No. 1997-0265
Application No. 08/294,882
§ 1.192(a)].
With respect to sole independent claim 1, the examiner
finds that Peterson substantially discloses the claimed
invention except for the connecting of the data ports in any
programmable selectable ordered sequence to form a ring
network. Franaszek teaches a cross point switch which can be
programmed to connect any device of a network to any other
device of the network. The examiner concludes that it would
have been obvious to modify the switching mechanism of
Peterson to be programmable as taught by Franaszek to obtain
configurability advantages [answer, pages 3-4].
Appellants only address the rejection with respect to
claim 1, and they make the following arguments: 1) appellants
argue that Peterson does not disclose a data signal bus as
recited in claim 1; 2) appellants argue that Franaszek has no
suggestion of interconnecting a programmably selectable set of
the plurality of ports together through the data signal bus
and in any programmably selectable ordered sequence to form a
ring network as recited in claim 1; and 3) appellants argue
that Franaszek teaches away from the claimed invention and
would not be combined with Peterson because Franaszek attempts
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