Appeal No. 1999-0001
Application No. 08/613,828
Turning next to the obviousness rejection of claims 10 through 19, the examiner states (Answer,
page 6) that:
The limitation of a “local switch actuator, including a local switch input” as
claimed is considered to be met by Miller’s ON/OFF switch 68, (fig. 1 and col. 11,
lines 49-56). Although Miller’s ON/OFF switch 68 actuates electrical power devices
by commands issued via Miller’s controller 50 (the equivalent “master interface”), the
use of ON/OFF switches to control electric power devices is commonly known in the
art, and the use of such switches (e.g., Miller’s ON/OFF switches 68) for such purpose
(i.e., “actuating electrical power independently” as claimed) is considered to have been
obvious to and a matter of design choice by the artisan at the time of the invention.
We agree with the examiner that ON/OFF switch 68 in Miller is actuated via commands sent
thereto, and we likewise agree with the examiner that it is known in the art to actuate ON/OFF
switches independently of the commands. We likewise agree with the examiner (Answer, page 4) that
the polling of remote stations in a control system is known in the art as evidenced by Cotie. As
indicated supra, appellants have not challenged the examiner’s finding concerning the polling of remote
stations. Thus, the skilled artisan would have found it manifestly obvious to transmit to the master
interface the state of the local switch actuator “in response to a control poll after the power delivery
state has been changed” (Brief, page 7). In short, the obviousness rejection of claims 10 through 19 is
sustained.
Turning lastly to the obviousness rejection of claims 20 and 24 through 29, the examiner has not
come to grips with the fact that the claimed first and second packets from the master interface to the
first and second slave nodes, respectively, are of different byte sizes (Brief, page 8). For this reason,
4
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007