Appeal No. 1997-1364
Application 08/343,276
allege is the second major difference between the pending
claims and the Truong patent, which feature is essentially
assuming for the sake of argument that the examiner's position
that it would have been obvious to the artisan to have
substituted the n-channel pumping transistor 70 in Figure 5 of
Truong for a p-channel pumping transistor, the above quoted
feature would not have been met. That is, their position is
that "the full threshold voltage Vtp of the p-channel
transistor 70 is imparted as a voltage loss to the output.”
See, for example, the paragraph bridging pages 10 and 11 of
the brief. The examiner's answer never comes to grips with
this argument nor the limitation itself as indicated earlier.
According to the description of Figure 5 at the bottom of
column 2 of Truong, the full FET 70 voltage drop of
approximately 0.2 volts maximum would still obtain or remain
once this transistor is conducting to impart the negative bias
to the substrate depicted in Figure 5, for example. Both
appellants' disclosed and claimed invention as well as Truong
consider this as a threshold voltage associated with the
transistor with respect to pumping transistors of each device.
On the basis of the examiner's failure to address this
limitation, on the strength of appellants' arguments which
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