Ex parte GIFFORD - Page 18




          Appeal No. 1998-0631                                                        
          Application 07/957,990                                                      

          of figure 4 (and figure 5) identifies a keyboard with                       
          internal pressure monitoring and processing capabilities.                   
               The Examiner holds that claims 2-8, 17-23, 31-44,                      
          99-112, and 121-134 do not read on the elected species                      
          because (OA3):                                                              
               [T]hese claims are all directed to averaging signals                   
               over pre-defined subsets of keys.  In contrast                         
               therewith, the description of the Fig. 4 embodiment at                 
               p. 6, line 25 to p. 7, line 5 teaches only that                        
               key-generated signals from all parts of the keyboard                   
               may be combined to form a single parameter, i.e. there                 
               are no predefined "subsets" of keys associated with the                
               Fig. 4 embodiment.  Thus, it appears that the Fig. 4                   
               embodiment is unable to do any sort of "region                         
               averaging" or "shared characteristic" evaluation.                      
          The Examiner appreciates that a determination of whether                    
          claims are readable on an elected species is based on all                   
          parts of the disclosure which are directed to the elected                   
          species, but finds no description linking the rejected                      
          claims to figure 4 (OA4).                                                   
               Appellant responds: (1) the pressure transducers of                    
          figure 4 are capable of performing any type of averaging                    
          (i.e., any key, regions of keys, or types of keys)                          
          (Br13-14); (2) there is no other species to which the                       
          subject matter of the "rejected" claims can belong, thus                    
          denying Appellant the opportunity to have the claims                        
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