Appeal No. 1997-4426
Application No. 08/515,767
and treats elements as empty black boxes. The
interconnections of the components in the claims, however, and
the specific functions recited for various circuitry cannot be
ignored when applying prior art. The examiner’s position that
the claimed invention is directed to common features for a
refresh circuit does not establish a prima facie case of
obviousness. Although we might agree with the examiner that
the invention is claimed in a broad manner, that does not
relieve the examiner of finding and applying prior art which
teaches or suggests the invention as claimed. The applied
prior art and the examiner’s explanation on this record do not
support the rejection of claim 29.
For example, the examiner attempts to read the logic
gate circuit of claim 29 on certain gates of Hoshi [answer,
page 8], but the logic gates of Hoshi identified by the
examiner do not perform the functions recited in claim 29.
The logic gate circuit of claim 29 must selectively disable an
output of the voltage level detecting circuit, but we can find
nothing in Hoshi which selectively disables the output of
circuit 21. The logic gates identified by the examiner
certainly do not perform this function.
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