Appeal No. 1998-1589
Application No. 08/388,631
Next, appellant addresses the points alleged to be misapprehended or overlooked by
the Board in its decision. (See Request for Rehearing at pages 3-5.) Here, appellant
addresses the language used in the decision as it relates to the examiner’s answer and
the prior art references. Appellant states that the Board is trying to obfuscate within the
decision the “fact that the references do not show what it says by several layers of
obfuscation.” Id. at page 4. We strongly disagree with appellant.
As pointed out by our reviewing court, we must first determine the scope of the claim.
"[T]he name of the game is the claim." In re Hiniker Co., 150 F.3d 1362,1369, 47
USPQ2d 1523, 1529 (Fed. Cir. 1998). Therefore, we look to the limitations set forth in the
claim. Here, we find that the language of claim 21 is quite broad. Claim 21 sets forth a
broad field of use limitation for “a random number generator” and not a computer having a
RNG. Therefore, we need only address a RNG. Next, the claim recites “a random number
generator circuit for generating a random sequence of signals” which may either hardware
or software-based. This is taught by elements 56 and 44 in the Figure 5 of Stankovic.
Control element 44 includes sub-elements: microprocessor 50, level shifter 52 and gate
drive 54 which are connected to PC 56 via a serial link. It is not explicitly stated in
Stankovic what generates the random sequence of signals, but Stankovic states
“microprocessor 50 is in turn connected to a personal computer 56 or equivalent to
facilitate development of the microcode for random switching.” (See Stankovic at column
4
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