Appeal No. 1997-0605
Application No. 08/551,981
the examiner that the basic elements of the claimed invention were known in the art at the
time of the invention, but in our view, the examiner has not provided any evidence why one
skilled in the art would have been motivated to select transistors with the operation relative to
a threshold and relative channel resistances as recited in the last two clauses of claim 13,
irrespective of the specific numeric values 0, 2.5 and 3.3. The examiner has equated the
value of the threshold voltage and the input/output voltages to be a “design expedient” and
maintains that the resistances could be met simply by selecting the W/L ratio of the channel
sizes. (See answer at pages 4 and 5.) We disagree with the examiner. While certain
features of the claimed invention, may individually be deemed to be design expedients for
skilled artisans, the examiner goes well beyond any individual feature in rationalizing the
obviousness of the claimed invention. In our view, the examiner has essentially maintained
that the method of selection and use of specific circuit components within the disclosed circuit
of Konishi is per se obvious because Yoshino teaches that it was known that W/L ratios may
vary the operation of transistors. We disagree with the examiner. In our opinion, the
examiner is not relying upon knowledge from the prior art, but upon knowledge of the
invention which was gleaned from appellant’s own specification to provide the motivation for
the selecting values and operating the circuit in the manner claimed. Therefore, we cannot
sustain the rejection of independent claims 13 and 14 and their dependent claims 15-19.
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