Appeal No. 1999-1629
Application 08/510,491
However, Herbert does not teach or suggest operating sets of
nozzles to print the postal mark, each set having less than
the total number of nozzles and being offset from each other
so as to include some of the nozzles of the other sets (i.e.,
the sets overlap one another). Herbert does not teach or
suggest using different sets of nozzles to print the postal
mark. The serial/parallel nature of the signal transmission
to the print head in Herbert has nothing to do with the
printing. The serial registers 51 in Herbert are loaded in
serial and read out in parallel to operate, via buffers 52,
the piezoelectric devices 50 of the print nozzles 11 (col. 5,
lines 20-28). To the extent the Examiner assumes the nozzles
are driven sequentially, one nozzle at a time, so as to
eventually fire all nozzles, this is error: the nozzles are
all driven at one time. In addition, a "set" requires a
"plurality of nozzles disposed consecutively in the row";
thus, operating nozzles individually in sequence does not meet
the claim language. We agree with Appellant that the
"wherein" limitation is a functional limitation, not a mere
statement of intended use, and is not taught or suggested by
Herbert or the other references. For these reasons, we
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