Appeal No. 1998-2874
Application No. 08/568,718
OPINION
The obviousness rejection of claims 1 through 10 and 12
is reversed.
We agree with the examiner (Answer, page 3) that “[t]he
admitted prior art and the Van de Plassche patents teach a
number of equally weighted dynamic elements, such as current
sources, for receiving the digital signal and providing an
analog output signal in response, and switching means
dynamically switching a number of the plurality of elements
(cells) according to a first sequencing scheme, which switches
each of the plurality of cells in a sequential order (see page
1 of the Specification . . .).” We also agree with the
examiner (Answer, page 4) that:
The patent to Jackson teaches, inter
alia, a dynamic element matching or “round
robin” scheme of component switching which
begins each conversion with the cell
immediately subsequent to the last cell used
in the preceding conversion. Jackson also
teaches that “[a]nother known nonlinearity
correction technique in digital-to-analog
converters, such as capacitor array converters,
is to randomize the switching order of the
capacitors in the capacitor array” (Jackson,
col. 2, lines 5-8). Jackson thus teaches,
within the same patent document, the approaches
both of selecting the next cell in a
predetermined order and selecting the next
4
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007