Appeal No. 1997-3670
Application No. 08/541,799
and has not even explained at all how the Barrett and Lazarus references are relevant to
the claimed subject matter. With regard to Mendenhall, the examiner gives a bare bones
“example” of how this reference is applied against instant claim 1 [pages 3-4 of the answer
of Jan. 3, 2000] but does not explain how the cited elements and portions of Mendenhall
are specifically applied against the claim although the examiner was explicitly requested to
do so in our remand. Moreover, the statement of rejection under 35 U.S.C. § 102 never
comes to grips with the programmable digital compensator or the “means for determining”
limitations of the claims. The examiner’s sole mention of the compensator limitation is in
the response section of the latest answer [page 5] and rather than show a correspondence
of the claimed elements to anything shown by the applied references, the examiner merely
states that a programmable digital compensator “is seen to read on any computer control
of these structures. Computer control is taught by each of the references.” This is a far cry
from specifically pointing out where the claimed elements are taught by the applied
references and even if one assumes, arguendo, that such a computer control is taught, in
general, by the
references, the examiner has not pointed out how such a computer control is functionally
equivalent to the control claimed or how it interrelates to other elements in the manner
claimed by appellants.
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