Appeal No. 1997-1982
Application No. 08/483,886
Heichler 4,932,029 Jun. 05,
1990
Claims 1, 2, and 4 through 7 stand rejected under 35
U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over Heichler.
Reference is made to the Examiner's Answer (Paper No. 24,
mailed October 15, 1996) for the examiner's complete reasoning
in support of the rejection, and to appellants' Brief (Paper
No. 23, filed July 1, 1996) and Reply Brief (Paper No. 25,
filed December 16, 1996) for appellants' arguments
thereagainst.
OPINION
We have carefully considered the claims, the applied
prior art reference, and the respective positions articulated
by appellants and the examiner. As a consequence of our
review, we will reverse the obviousness rejection of claims 1,
2, and 4 through 7.2
No. 0188271, in the prior art section of the Answer. On page 2 of the Answer,
the examiner withdraws all rejections based upon Harmon and LaRosa. Further,
the examiner has not applied Fukasawa against any of the claims on appeal.
Accordingly, we will not consider LaRosa, Harmon, or Fukasawa in deciding this
appeal.
We note in passing that in our careful review of claim 1 we found that2
the use of the word "especially" in the second line may render claim 1
indefinite. We have interpreted the claim as being directed to transmission
on an optical link in view of the reference to an optical link in line 11 of
3
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