Appeal No. 1999-1640
Application 08/782,464
disclosed and claimed invention rather than a prospective view of the applied prior art
alone.
The examiner’s additional view that the claimed clamping operation in each
independent claim on appeal was considered by the examiner to have been inherent once
the prior art combination is made is ill founded. Even though we recognize from our own
study of the appellants’ admitted prior art Figures 1 and 2 that the circuit in Figure 1B may
be modified to perform the claimed clamping operation, there is no teaching or suggestion
from Brannon that it would have been obvious for the artisan to do so as observed by
appellants at page 7 of the brief. Since the examiner has not presented us with evidence
of any valid basis to have modified appellants’ prior art Figures 1 and 2 utilizing cascoded
switching elements or transistors, we must reverse the rejection of each independent claim
on appeal since each of them in some way recites such a circuit arrangement. As such,
we must therefore reverse the rejection of each of the respective dependent claims as well.
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