Appeal No. 1998-1103
Application No. 08/668,718
arguments that Okada anticipates the claimed subject matter. The examiner has failed to
present a prima facie case of anticipation by failing to clearly show a correspon-dence
between each of the instant claimed elements and that disclosed by Okada. It is more
than a matter of Okada operating upon commands that may originate from a numerical
controller. Instant claim 8 requires recognizing a miscellaneous command from a
numerical controller being executed by the programmable controller, storing the result of
that recognition, judging whether the miscellaneous command is complete or not in
accordance with the stored contents, specifying a miscellaneous command which need not
be completed before a next command is executed, checking whether a previously given
miscellaneous command is being executed or not at a time when a next miscellaneous
command is executed, executing the next miscellaneous command after the previously
given miscellaneous command is complete if it is being
executed and executing the next miscellaneous command without waiting for the
completion of the miscellaneous command which need not be completed.
Thus, the claim has very specific, interrelated times and conditions for execution of
various miscellaneous commands and the examiner’s generally pointing to various
portions of Okada showing a receipt of commands by the sequence controller from a main
computer and a repeated execution of steps until a relevant operation started in
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