Appeal No. 1997-4221 Page 5
Application No. 08/255,518
which the examiner considers to correspond to the claimed
elements. The examiner recognizes, however, that Deroo fails
to disclose or suggest the integrity check “concurrently on-
the-fly,” as claimed. The examiner then turns to Tsang for a
teaching of “on-the-fly” error correction and concludes that it
would have been obvious to combine Tsang with Deroo “because
this allows the next codeword to be sent before the preceding
word is actually corrected” [answer-page 5].
Even, assuming, arguendo, that Deroo discloses all that
the examiner says it does , the examiner’s combination of Deroo1
with Tsang appears to be based on hindsight rather than on
anything suggested by either reference. We find no reason,
either within the references themselves or within the artisan’s
knowledge, for an artisan to have been led to modify Deroo in
any way by the teachings of Tsang. It is not even clear to us
how such a combination would be made even if, somehow, there
was a suggestion to make it. The examiner contends, in the
1We are skeptical about whether Deroo, in fact, discloses
all the features contended by the examiner as corresponding to
the claimed subject matter.
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