Appeal No. 1999-1447
Application No. 08/446,316
subject matter of the appealed claims forms a
general inventive concept different from that of the
inventions defined by the claims of the ‘131 patent
for the following reasons: Each of the appealed
claims recites a device or step for producing and
processing a first signal indicative of audio being
present and a second, squelch signal which indicates
that no audio is present. The general inventive
concept defined by the appealed claims allows the
signal output from the devices and methods claimed
therein to prevent any audio output from being
producedwhile the squelch signal is active. That
same general inventive concept is not present in any
of the claims of the ‘131 patent.
Because the appealed claims recite a general
inventive concept different from that of the claims
of the ‘131 patent, Applicant was prevented from
presenting the appealed playback claims for
examination in the application that issued into the
‘131 patent in 1985-86. Thus, step 2 of the
Schneller-based double patenting test is not
satisfied with respect to the appealed claims, and
the rejection of those claims should be withdrawn.
A limitation-by-limitation comparison of the independent
claims in the patent to the independent claims in the
application is provided infra. To aid in this comparison, the
following alphabetical designation has been provided for each
signal and element that is claimed in both the patent claims
and the application claims:
CLAIMED SIGNAL OR ELEMENT ALPHABETICAL DESIGNATION
1. Video signal 35 A
2. Audio signal 21 B
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