Appeal No. 1997-3481
Application 08/476,543
Manual are not prior art (Br7-8), and in any case do not
render the claimed subject matter unpatentable.
The Examiner's final statement of the rejection is the
following (EA3):
In view of the fatally defective disclosure,
application of the prior art is not facilitated, however,
all essential disclosed and claimed concepts are shown by
the prior art. Chadima and Sakai teach the essential
"flash" type system. Plural code reading is taught by
the Knowles publication and Swartz (col. 5, line 9, et
seq). Dobras teaches printed circuits, and Mcwaters
[sic] teaches that Roms (or PROMS) associated with
processors is garden variety for any desired use. (See
fig. 4). Decision trees are ubiquitous computer program
routines.
Thus, the ultimate statement of the rejection is based
only on Dobras, McWaters, Sakai, Swartz '798, Chadima, and
Knowles. We address this rejection accordingly and find it
unnecessary to address whether the Symbol Memorandum and the
Metrologic Product Manual are prior art.
Obviousness
The issue is whether the combination of references
suggests a bar code reader that automatically determines the
type of bar code and converts the representative code signal
into a useable form regardless of the type of code without
requiring the user to first identify the type of code being
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