Appeal No. 1998-1657 Page 8
Application No. 08/674,282
and claims similar thereto in the divisional '328 Application
and its parent application. (Appeal Br. at 38.)
Although claims 5-7, 20-26, and 28-39 of the instant
application have been amended since the restriction
requirement, the examiner fails to allege, let alone show,
that the claims have been altered to recite a method of
operating a sense amplifier utilizing a read amplifier and
data write circuitry or a method of any sort. To the
contrary, the claims are still apparatus claims drawn to "[a]
sense amplifier arrangement for an integrated circuit memory
...." Cf. Applied Mats., Inc. v. Advanced Semiconductor
Mats., 98 F.3d 1563, 1568, 40 USPQ2d 1481, 1484 (Fed. Cir.
1996) ("In this case consonance was not violated, for the
process claims remained in separate patents from the apparatus
claims although the scope of the process claims was
modified.") The claims also omit data write circuitry.
Because claims 5-7, 20-26, and 28-39 recite neither a method
nor data write circuitry, we are not persuaded that the claims
cross the line of demarcation drawn in the restriction
requirement. Therefore, we reverse the provisional rejection
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