Appeal No. 1999-2256 Page 7
Application No. 08/686,477
Having determined what subject matter is being claimed,
the next inquiry is whether the subject matter is obvious.
"’A prima facie case of obviousness is established when the
teachings from the prior art itself would appear to have
suggested the claimed subject matter to a person of ordinary
skill in the art.’" In re Bell, 991 F.2d 781, 782, 26 USPQ2d
1529, 1531 (Fed. Cir. 1993) (quoting In re Rinehart, 531 F.2d
1048, 1051, 189 USPQ 143, 147 (CCPA 1976)).
Here, as noted by the examiner, Mager does place “a
binary counter 2900 operative to receive a clock signal of
154kc on 2905 from a source ... at terminal ‘CLK,’” col. 26,
ll. 13-16, in a state of indefinite reset. Specifically,
“[c]oncurrent receipt of a D0 signal from data bus 195A and a
CPU command signal on line 3100 by AND gate 3120 will enable
oiutputting [sic] thereof on line 3125 thereby putting time
2900 in indefinite reset and locking out fault detection until
the data bus D0 signal is removed.” Col. 27, ll. 47-51. The
examiner fails to show, however, that placing the binary
counter in the state of indefinite reset halts the supply of
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007