Appeal No. 1998-2675
Application 08/779,024
OPINION
The claims are grouped to stand or fall together (Br3).
Thus, claim 1 will be analyzed as the representative claim.
The Examiner cites Eguchi as teaching an active noise
reduction (ANC) device as claimed. Appellants admit that ANC
devices with an auxiliary microphone closer to a speaker than
a noise pickup microphone exist, as shown in the admitted
prior art of figure 2 and in Eguchi (Br5). The differences,
as recognized by the Examiner (EA4), between Eguchi and the
subject matter of claim 1 are that Eguchi (1) does not have an
expanded room formed by enlarging an area of a cross section
of part of the duct, and (2) does not locate the noise
microphone, provided upstream of the auxiliary microphone, in
an expanded room. The Examiner finds that Chaplin,
figures 5-7, teaches a microphone in an expanded room for
picking up noise, where the purpose of the expanded room is to
protect the microphone under extreme conditions such as heat
in the duct (EA4). The Examiner concludes that it would have
been obvious, in view of Chaplin, to use an expanded room for
housing the ANC device in Eguchi in order to protect the
microphone under extreme conditions (EA5).
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