Appeal No. 1999-1551
Application No. 08/547,736
With regard to claims 7 and 8, these claims set forth specifics of the type of digits in
the page request signal. In claim 7, the first and second type digits of the page request
signal are both hexadecimal F while in claim 8, a seventh least significant TPUI bit of the
page request signal is 1. The examiner’s position is that while the applied references do
not disclose such specifics, since appellants have not disclosed that a hexadecimal F or a
1 in this context is for any particular purpose, it appears that the invention would perform
equally well with any number of other well known coding schemes, i.e., these limitations
are merely design choices.
Appellants argue, however, that these digit and bit formats are not merely design
choice “but are selected to enable multiple handsets to simultaneously generate alerting
indications for an incoming call within the constraints of a particular signalling format”
[principal brief-page 11, citing Table 1 and pages 9-11 of the instant specification].
We will not sustain the rejection of claims 7 and 8 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 since
appellants have shown a specific purpose for the particular digit and bit formats claimed
and the examiner has offered no rebuttal. Thus, since a particular purpose for these
specifically claimed digits and bits has been shown, and the examiner has not shown the
equivalence of other “well known coding schemes” with the claimed limitations, a rejection
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