Appeal No. 1998-2868
Application No. 08/635,986
The obviousness rejection of claims 1 and 2 is sustained,
and the obviousness rejection of claims 7 and 11 is reversed.
With the exception of the transmission intervals,
Akerberg discloses all of the claimed communicator structure
of claims 1 and 2. The examiner contends (Answer, page 4)
that “it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in
the art to implement any desired timing interval, since it
would have been obvious . . . to implement the most optimal
timing interval for the system operation.” When we turn to
appellants’ disclosure (specification, page 7, lines 26
through 33) for guidance as to the significance of the
selected transmission timing intervals, we do not find any
significance attached to the selected transmission intervals.
The same holds true for appellants’ arguments (Brief, pages 4
through 8). Appellants’ tracking arguments (Brief, pages 4
through 8) are not convincing of the nonobviousness of the
claimed invention because tracking is not set forth in claims
1 and 2. In the absence of any significance to the
transmission intervals, we agree with the examiner that the
skilled artisan would have found it obvious to set the
transmission interval to an optimal value for the particular
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