Appeal No. 1997-4129
Application 08/237,988
is separate control software 107 and capability information
109 for each slave 103.
In our opinion, the limitation of "a predefined portion
of the control program" in claims 1, 4, and 8 is broad
enough to read on the configuration information in Hughes,
where the configuration information for the terminals and
the load modules together correspond to the claimed "control
program." The "predefined portion" limitation does not
positively require the structure of a single program of
consecutive lines of control software instructions
concatenated with (or "appended to") capability information,
because the specification indicates that "inseparably
associating" includes storing the capability information and
the control software as separate files in a database of the
master device (specification, pages 8-9). Thus, the
Examiner's reasoning that it would have been obvious to
append the configuration information to the load modules is
unnecessary in view of the breadth of the claims. One of
ordinary skill in the art would appreciate that the system
in Hughes distinguishes between configuration information
and the load modules and reads the configuration information
- 8 -
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007