Appeal No. 1998-3339 Page 6
Application No. 08/614,459
have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the
time of the invention to only sample rejected products for the
multivariate principal component analysis (PCA) because this
would allow one to use PCA to determine the leading causes of
the various defects encountered in whatever system the
invention was being applied.” (Id. at 4-6.) The appellants
argue, "[t]his argument assumes that there is some motivation
in the prior art for sampling only rejected products to
achieve an understanding of the cause of the reject. The
Examiner has shown no such motivation, other than that
provided by Applicants' disclosure." (Appeal Br. at 3.) They
add, “[a]pplicants do not claim that the multivariate
statistical method employed in the process is novel, only that
the application of the statistical method to analyze rejected
products resulting from a process using a set of reject
classifications is new.” Id. at 2.
“‘[T]he main purpose of the examination, to which every
application is subjected, is to try to make sure that what
each claim defines is patentable. [T]he name of the game is
the claim ....’” In re Hiniker Co., 150 F.3d 1362, 1369,
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007