Appeal No. 1998-0750
Application 08/232,135
Claim 46 depends from claim 38. At page 13 of the answer,
the examiner reasoned that “since Fukuoka’s driving circuit
consumes less power (col. 3, lines 46-48), therefore, Fukuoka’s
first to fourth circuitry are implemented on a low-voltage chip.”
Whereas this position is on its face reasonable and appellants
have not responded thereto, we will sustain the rejection of claim
46 as obvious over Fukuoka and Kanayama.
We will not sustain the rejection of independent claim 18,
and claims 24 and 25 which depend therefrom, as obvious over
Fukuoka. Claim 18 recites “means for integrating said second
current” and “means for comparing said integrated second current
to an integrated reference current”. With reference to Fukuoka’s
Figure 1, the feedback line of the circuit between output line 9
and differential amplifier (comparator) 1 has no integrator. The
examiner observes that the reference provides an integrator
capacitor CH to provide an integrated reference current and takes
the position that it would have been obvious to modify the circuit
of Fukuoka to have an integrator capacitor for integrating the
second current on the feedback line because the mere duplication
of parts in a device involves only routine skill in the art. This
position is unpersuasive. Even though the modification merely
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