Appeal No. 1999-1551
Application No. 08/547,736
The examiner’s response is to point to Barnes’ recitation of “ [o]perational flow is
next directed to decision block 344 where it is determined whether the transceiver is being
addressed as part of a ‘normal’ group of transceivers (i.e., a predetermined group of
listeners such as a squad of police cars, fleet of taxis, etc.)”. The examiner does not
identify the particular portion of Barnes on which he relies but, apparently, this quotation is
taken from column 25, lines 8-13 of Barnes. The examiner then concludes, “[p]resumably,
this group of transceivers is not constrained by N” [answer-page 8].
We will not sustain the rejection of independent claim 21 under 35 U.S.C. § 103
because the examiner has not convincingly shown that any one of the applied references
teaches or suggests that the total number of handsets responding to a broadcast message
is not constrained by a value of N, where N is a number of slots of the digital radio link. To
indicate that Barnes “presumably” shows a group of transceivers not constrained by N is
too speculative to support a finding of obviousness under 35 U.S.C. § 103.
CONCLUSION
We have sustained the rejection of claims 1-6 and 11-20 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 but
we have not sustained the rejection of claims 7-10 and 21 under 35 U.S.C.
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