Appeal No. 1997-4051 Page 5
Application No. 08/479,245
the totality of the record, we are persuaded that the examiner
erred in rejecting claims 1-8. Accordingly, we reverse.
Regarding the obviousness of claims 1-8, the appellant
argues, “even though both Shimoi and Applicant use the terms
‘write-back’ and ‘write-through’, the meanings of these terms
in Shimoi are significantly different than the corresponding
terms in Applicant's Claims 1 and 5 and in Applicants'
Specification.” (Appeal Br. at 6.)
The examiner does not contest that the meanings of the
terms in Shimoi are significantly different than the
corresponding terms in the appellant’s claims and
specification. Instead, he makes the following reply.
[A] term in a claim may not be given a meaning
repugnant to the usual meaning of that term, In re
Hill, 161 F.2d 367, 73 USPQ 482 (CCPA 1947). The
term "write-back" and "write-through" in claims 1
and 5 are used by the claim to mean "write-back
caches, unlike 'write-through' caches, do not
immediately write a modified memory word into the
main memory. Rather, the 'dirty' memory words
remain in the cache and are written back into the
main memory at the occurrence of a predetermined
event, such as a timer interrupt programmed to occur
periodically", while the accepted meaning is “ ... in
the write-back mode, the data temporarily stored in
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007