Appeal No. 1997-0410
Application No. 08/041,446
rejections, and to the appellant's brief (Paper No. 16, filed Jun. 10, 1996) for the
appellant's arguments thereagainst.
OPINION
In reaching our decision in this appeal, we have given careful consideration to the
appellant's specification and claims, to the applied prior art references, and to the
respective positions articulated by the appellant and the examiner. As a consequence of
our review, we make the determinations which follow.
Appellant argues that the examiner has not set forth a prima facie case of
obviousness since the examiner has not set forth prior art which teaches or suggests the
step of maintaining the encoder buffer occupancy which is recited in the language of
independent claims 1, 8 and 12. (See brief at pages 5-7.) We agree with appellant. The
examiner maintains that the encoder occupancy of Ansari is a time varying function and
that “it is considered obvious if not inherent that some sort of necessary and
required equations and limitations with computer control similar if not the same as that
claimed are required in order to provide the same effective rate buffering system.” (See
answer at pages 8-9.) While we agree that there is most likely a structured buffering theory
in Ansari which may be able to be described mathematically, we cannot agree with the
examiner that any description thereof has been set forth in the text of Ansari or by any
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