Appeal No. 2000-0471
Application No. 08/871,442
the bit position is interpreted as a “0.” While Koike shows
2/3 majority voting, rather than 3/5 majority voting, it is
the examiner’s position that it would have been a “matter of
design choice” for a majority decision device to perform
either 2/3 or 3/5 voting, depending on the necessary degree of
accuracy.
The examiner also recognized that Koike did not disclose
the feature of counting up to a maximum number of three, the
number of 1's present in each of a plurality of five bit
repeats. However, the examiner points to Brown for a teaching
of terminating a read process when a count exceeds a preset
threshold.
The examiner concluded that it would have been obvious to
modify Koike to use Brown’s plurality of count and compare
logics 32 with a value which is one-half of the repetition
number, in place of the adder used in Koike.
Appellants argue that the instant invention is
“completely different” from what is suggested by Koike and
Brown because when the count of 1's or 0's has reached the
majority value, which in the case of 5 repeats is 3, then the
-4-
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