Appeal No. 1999-0497
Application 08/760,922
references teach this feature of claim 1, then no combination
of these references can be said to teach this feature of claim
1. Appellants also argue that there is no motivation for
combining the disparate teachings of the applied prior art.
The examiner responds that the argued feature of claim
1 is met by Sues and De Vaulx which “attach external equipment
to the vehicle system so that the external equipment can
(re)initialize the status of the locking and unlocking system
to set a new code” [answer, page 7]. The examiner also
disagrees with appellants’ assertion that there is no
motivation to combine the applied prior art.
We agree with appellants that none of the applied
prior art references teach the last feature of claim 1, and
the examiner has failed to properly consider this feature of
claim 1. Specifically, this last feature of claim 1 requires
that “the transmitter” generate the new code to the receiver.
The phrase “the transmitter” of claim 1 refers to the portable
transmitter corresponding to the key for a motor vehicle.
Thus, even though the claimed invention uses an external
diagnostic device for supplying an external signal for
(re)initialization, the new code signal comes from the
-8-
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