Appeal No. 1997-1351
Application 08/127,924
therefore, confusing. The interface module can (and usually
will) contain more than the controller and so an interface
module is not necessarily the same thing as a controller.
Further, while the interface module is a circuit, it is not
necessarily an application-specific integrated circuit
(ASIC), which is a chip that is custom designed for a
specific application rather than a general-purpose chip such
as a microprocessor (although we note that claims 29-32 do
not recite an application-specific integrated circuit as
disclosed in the specification, page 4). These claims
qualify the structure of the interface module and are not
confusing. The rejection of claims 29-32 is reversed.
Claims 33 and 42
The Examiner considers it "unclear what the control
lines control or how they are relevant to the apparatus in
claim 19" (FR4).
Appellants state that no further recitations are
required for these claims to be definite (Br7).
The control lines are shown in figure 1 as element 18
and connect the control processor 8 and the remainder
processor 10, as claimed. The claims do not need to recite
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