Appeal No. 1999-2057
Application 08/405,062
because the participants are distributed, hence, the term
"virtual meeting room." The configuration of the virtual
meeting room is stored in a data structure as shown in Fig. 3.
The Examiner's questioning of the definitions for the virtual
meeting room (EA13-15) fails to appreciate that the electronic
circuit configuration and the data structure "represent"
(simulate) a virtual meeting room. The Examiner's
interpretation of the disclosure that "[t]he virtual meeting
room is thus an electronic analog of a physical meeting place
where conferences are held" (specification, p. 5, lines 7-9),
as referring to analog signals (EA14), clearly misapprehends
the term "analog" as referring to analog signals, when, in
fact, it means anything that is analogous or similar to
something else. There is nothing confusing or misdescriptive
about the claim terminology that would create nonenablement.
We have reviewed the specification, drawings, and
Appellants' arguments, and conclude that the claimed subject
matter is based on an enabling disclosure. For example, the
circuit of Fig. 2 shows a network 10 having a plurality of
multimedia ports (ports of data server 50, video server 54,
and audio server 58), each for connecting the network to a
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