Appeal No. 1998-0706
Application 08/166,279
the message to the appropriate LAN for receipt by
the destination station. [Col. 1, ll. 18-38. ] 3
Citing the foregoing passage, the examiner argues (for the
first in the Answer at 10) that "[i]t would have been obvious
to replace the decision making of the individual processors
with routing table means that are included in the data
interconnect means because a more central location for a
routing table eliminates the need for distributed tables, thus
decreasing the overall cost of the system." Appellants did
not file a reply brief specifically addressing this reasoning.
Furthermore, appellants' sole argument in their opening brief
in opposition to the proposed combination of Allen and Bione,
i.e., that "Bione fails to teach, or even suggest, a 'routing
table means containing information indicative of the processor
section nearest . . . [a] left or . . . right data transfer
3Bione, after explaining that "[w]hile the foregoing
procedure normally operates satisfactorily, the use of such
look-up tables and interbridge addresses to effect
communications between stations of different LANs is hardware
intensive and therefore a relatively costly as well as a
low-speed technique" (col. 1, ll. 41-46), discloses a system
which operates in a different manner. Appellants do not
contend that Bione considered as a whole teaches away from
using look-up tables in the bridge interfaces.
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