Appeal No. 1999-2375
Application No. 08/892,822
language of claim 1 recites “means for decompressing selected portions, for carrying out
the prescribed functions, of the compressed BIOS code written to and stored in the system
RAM memory for expediting the initialization process of the data processing system.” In
our view, the selected portions of the compressed BIOS may be the remainder of the
BIOS, since there are plural portions which individually are a part, but add up to the whole
remainder. Therefore, we find that the examiner need not rely on the teachings of
Chambers to teach or suggest decompression of less than the whole compressed portion
of the BIOS. Consequently, we agree with the examiner that the combination would have
met the limitations of independent claim 1 as claimed.
While we note that appellants have additionally grouped dependent claim 11 and
independent claims 6, 16 and 17 together with independent claim 1 at page 3 of the brief,
we note that independent claims 6, 16 and 17 specifically recite decompressing a
“selected portion” of the compressed BIOS. In view of our above interpretation, it would be
unfair to group these claims together. Therefore, we address them separately as a group,
but we sustain the rejection of dependent claim 11 with the group including independent
claim 1.
In view of appellants’ argument concerning decompressing a portion or part of the
compressed BIOS, and viewing the prior art applied as a whole, we agree with appellants
that we find no motivation in the prior art to make the combination of teachings as
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