Appeal No. 1999-1992
Application No. 08/848,842
merely serve as the threshold voltage signals for the
operation of amplifiers 31 and 32. Therefore, we cannot
sustain the anticipation rejection of claim 1 over Farwell.
With respect to claim 8, appellants point out on page 12
of the brief that “the Farwell patent has nothing to do with
cross-conduction as claimed” and furthermore the Farwell
patent does not, brief at page 13, show “clamping the control
voltages of the switching devices in the manner claimed.”
We agree with appellants’ position. In Farwell, the
output of either amplifier 31 or 32 renders the FET 41 or FET
42 conductive depending upon the value of the transient
voltage. Therefore, the input to the converter, VIN, either
bypasses the DC-to-DC voltage converter 11 or goes through it.
Thus, the output voltage of the two amplifiers do not directly
affect each other’s operation. But, even if we assume that
the examiner’s statement on page 7 of the examiner’s answer,
namely, “[o]nly one switch will be on at a time to prevent
cross conduction for a positive transient condition and only
the other switch will be on for the negative going transient
condition” is correct, we do not see the claimed clamping of
the controlled voltage of each of the said switches in a low
7
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007