Appeal No. 1997-0397
Application 07/863,900
the capacitor should be selected to match the load (col. 2,
lines 35-40). Gerfast shows the capacitor being connected to a
rectifier circuit exactly as shown by Appellants. One of ordinary
skill in the art would have been motivated to use Gerfast's circuit
with its current-limiting capacitor to provide power to the brushless
DC motor of Sato to power the motor from an AC voltage.
Alternatively, one of ordinary skill in the art would have known that
the brushless DC motor in Gerfast could have any structure and would
have found it obvious to apply the control circuit to a known
brushless DC motor, such as Sato.
The question is whether this combination meets the limitations
of claim 66. We see two possible issues. The first issue is whether
the limitation of "said motor hardware being operable within a range
of power outputs with said range being determinable by the
capacitance of the capacitor when such capacitance is within a
predetermined range" defines over the motor hardware in Sato and
Gerfast. That is, the question is whether this is a property of all
brushless DC motors (at least to some extent) or is only true of
Appellants' brushless DC motor structure (which is not specifically
recited in claim 66). The Examiner impliedly found this property
inherent in the brushless DC motors in Sato and Gerfast. While some
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