Appeal No. 2001-2236
Application 07/955,669
"Coulson's target selection cannot occur upon assertion of 'any
single bit' when only one bit, the shared address or bit, will
cause the target to be selected" (RBr4).
This issue involves a question of claim interpretation.
There are two occurrences of "any single bit" in claim 1 and any
claim interpretation and application of Coulson must be
consistent and satisfy both occurrences. We interpret the
limitation of "determining . . . whether any single bit of the
SCSI data bus is asserted" to mean determining whether only a
single bit asserted on the SCSI data bus. It appears that
Coulson determines whether any single bit is asserted (col. 8,
lines 51-52: "there must be only one bit true"), as opposed to
more than one bit (col. 8, lines 52-53: "If there is more than
one bit true, meaning that another peripheral is reselecting the
host"). Therefore, it is at least arguable under our claim
interpretation that Coulson teaches "determining . . . whether
any single bit of the SCSI data bus is asserted."
However, the limitation of "if any single bit of the SCSI
data bus is asserted, the separate target device responding on
the SCSI bus" (emphasis added) clearly requires that the target
respond if any single bit is asserted, not just a bit
corresponding to the shared address with the initiator. Coulson
determines whether the single bit address matches the shared
address of the initiator device. Therefore, the target in
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