Appeal No. 1998-0295
Application No. 08/202,828
The obviousness rejection of claims 1 through 17, 19 and
21 through 24 is reversed.
The examiner recognizes (final rejection, page 3) that
the admitted prior art does not teach “discharging the
capacitor, or integrstor [sic, integrator], during ‘off’
times.” According to the examiner, “Rhodes teaches such a
discharging technique.” Based upon the teachings of Rhodes,
the examiner concludes (final rejection, page 3) that:
One of ordinary skill in the art would have known to
null the capacitor as Rhodes teaches to start at
this zero level so as to fire the capacitor at known
and constant times. One could not predict when the
capacitor would fire if there was an undetermined
amount of charge remaining on the capacitor.
As the title of Rhodes’ integrator invention indicates,
Rhodes is concerned with fast discharge of a capacitor when an
input signal to the integrator changes polarity. A positive
input signal on lead 10 to the integrator is inverted by
amplifiers 14 and 18 (Figure 1). The negative output signal
from inverter 18 charges capacitor 52, and the negative output
from inverter 14 activates switch 46, but not switch 36
(column 2, lines 34 through 49). During this state,
integration with capacitor 52 and integrating amplifier 18
4
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