Appeal No. 1999-1797
Application No. 08/635,197
Trans. Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems, vol. 13, no. 12, pp.
1450-60 (Dec. 1994).
Claims 1-13 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over
Ramachandran.
We refer to the Final Rejection (Paper No. 7) and the Examiner's Answer (Paper
No. 14) for a statement of the examiner's position and to the Brief (Paper No. 13) and the
Reply Brief (Paper No. 15) for appellant’s position with respect to the claims which stand
rejected.
OPINION
The rejection of claim 1 as being obvious in view of Ramachandran is set forth on
pages 3 through 7 of the Answer. Appellant contends, as articulated on pages 5 through
10 of the Brief, that the article fails to disclose or suggest the claimed functions performed
by the “difference extracting means” and the “extracted circuit information obtaining
means.”
The rejection, at page 5 of the Answer, points to the right column of page 1458 of
Ramachandran as disclosing a type of “extraction.” The relevant passage in
Ramachandran uses the phrase “extracting the difference.” However, we agree with
appellant, as advanced on page 7 of the Brief, that the passage misses the mark with
respect to the “difference extracting means” requirements of claim 1. The examiner’s
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