Appeal No. 1998-2749
Application 08/637,062
Although we reversed the anticipation rejection of claim 20,
from which claim 21 depends, we address the obviousness rejection
of claim 21 in case it cures the deficiencies in the rejection of
claim 20.
The Examiner found, with respect to claim 20, that Hausman
teaches a variable threshold value which is varied in accordance
with the rate of loading of data frames into the memory buffer.
The Examiner concludes, with respect to claim 21, that "[i]t would
have been [an] obvious matter of design choice to one of ordinary
skill in the Data Processing art at the time of the invention to
use rate of unloading data frames because it would perform equally
well [as using the rate of loading]" (Paper No. 2, p. 6).
Claim 20 recites a variable threshold value to determine
whether to engage the DMA circuit in unloading the memory buffer,
not just any variable threshold. The threshold to which the
Examiner refers is an adjustable (variable) Early Receive
(Early RX) Threshold, which has to do with the data transmission,
not with the DMA backup mode (col. 3, lines 10-32). For this
reason, we reversed the anticipation rejection of claim 20. Since
Hausman does not disclose a variable DMA threshold, it does not
suggest a variable threshold based on the rate of unloading of
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