Appeal No. 1997-3444
Application 08/268,728
skilled in the art as a direct anticipation of the claimed
invention, whether the reference suggests using such operation
or avoiding it" (EA6-7).
The fact that the transistor in the Handbook has a
"latch-up" region of operation is not sufficient evidence to
prove inherency of the specific operations in claim 21.
First, the Examiner has not shown the existence of "a boundary
point between the second and third operation regions" in the
Handbook. It is not even apparent where the three regions
could be in the diagrams showing the avalanche region, such as
figure 3-15, because the diagrams are not defined in terms of
V .
BE
Second, the Examiner has not shown how the Handbook
anticipates the limitation of "means for biasing . . .
including means for varying a voltage applied to the base of
said bipolar transistor so that when V exceeds a
BE
predetermined threshold and the voltage applied to the base of
the bipolar transistor is removed by said means for biasing,
the transistor is self-latched at the boundary between the
second and third operating regions to output from the base of
the bipolar transistor an output voltage at a first level."
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