Appeal No. 1997-3821
Application No. 08/570,256
such connectors, which would be plugged into mating connectors
in the expansion slots of computers, as implied by appellant's
discussion of the prior art at pages 2 and 3 of the
specification, quoted in part at page 2 of this opinion.
Furthermore, while we agree with the examiner that it would
have been obvious to provide Morgan's memory controller 30 as
a package having connecting pins for engaging mating
connectors on the CPU board 15, that modification would not
satisfy the requirement of claim 1 and the other independent
claims that the claimed controller chip, including its
internal registers (Morgan's configuration registers 200 in
configuration status register 40), be mounted on the expansion
circuit board along with the claimed memory (Morgan's
signature registers 160 - Fig. 5). On this point, the
examiner further explains:
Applicant also argues that there is no incentive
to place the various elements on a single board as
suggest[ed] by the Examiner (see P 16-17 of the Appeal
Brief). It is a common practice in the art to move
elements onto a common board to reduce cost and
to increase reliability because there are less
interconnections. In addition it has been held that
making pieces separable/integral is a design choice.
See Nerwin v. Erlichman, 168 USPQ 177 ([Bd. Pat. App.]
1969) and In re Larson, [340 F.2d 965,] 144 USPQ 347
(CCPA 1965). [Answer at 7.]
12
Page: Previous 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007