Appeal No. 1997-3129 Application No. 08/301,743 Turning to a consideration of dependent claims 2, 3, 15, 16, 18, and 20, we sustain the 35 U.S.C. § 103 rejection of these claims as well. We agree with the Examiner that the transceiver, counter, and decoder circuitry of dependent claims 2, 3, 16, and 18 is suggested by the circuitry illustrated in Figures 5a and 5b of Sauerwald. Similarly, we find that the test pattern and signature register features of claims 15 and 20 are suggested at column 9, lines 28-65 and column 10, lines 60-68, respectively, of Sauerwald. We next turn to a consideration of dependent claims 4-10, 12, 13, and 19 and note that, while we found Appellants’ arguments to be unpersuasive with respect to claims 1-3, 11, 14-18, and 20, we reach the opposite conclusion with respect to dependent claims 4-10, 12, 13, and 19. Dependent claim 4, upon which claims 5-8 depend, 12, 13, and 19 are directed to sensing circuitry which determines the establishment of a data link between data transceivers. While the Examiner recognizes that Sauerwald has no disclosure of such feature, the Examiner nevertheless concludes (Answer, page 5) that the skilled artisan would have found it obvious to provide such a feature. The Examiner, however, has provided no support on the record 9Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 NextLast modified: November 3, 2007