Appeal No. 1999-1447
Application No. 08/446,316
Claims 43 and 45 through 54 stand rejected under 35
U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over Newell in view of
Nakagawa.
Claims 43 and 45 through 54 stand rejected “under the
judicially created doctrine of double patenting over claims 1-
12 of U.S. Patent No. 4,583,131 since the claims, if allowed,
would improperly extend the ‘right to exclude’ already granted
in the patent” (Answer, page 3).
Reference is made to the brief and the answer for the
respective positions of the appellant and the examiner.
OPINION
The rejections of claims 43 and 45 through 54 are
reversed.
Turning first to the obviousness rejections, appellant
argues (Brief, page 6) that:
Neither Newell nor Nakagawa teach or suggest the
claimed squelch signal in the record disc playback
apparatus of the type recited in the appealed
claims. Newell discloses [Figure 13] a control line
connecting code recognition circuit 210 (sic) to
switch 210 (sic) and the rejection of Paper 26
infers that a signal on that line distinguishes
audio data from visual data in a signal being
recovered from a disc. That signal may be active
(i.e., indicate presence of visual data) for a
6
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