Appeal No. 2000-0471
Application No. 08/871,442
Koike, Koike does, indeed, concern itself with memory
reduction and this would have been enough for the claims
appearing before us in our decision of May 16, 1997. However,
the instant claims before us on this appeal specifically state
that the memory means is now “limited in size to storing a
maximum number of three.” That means that there can be no
more than two bits of memory for each bit of the transmitted
data word. Thus, the instant claims are limited to a specific
quantity of memory reduction which is not taught or suggested
by Koike and/or Brown. As argued by appellants, Koike, at
pages 6-7 of the principal brief, appears to suggest, in the
case of 3/5 majority voting, that three bits of memory are
required. The examiner has no convincing argument to the
contrary, arguing, at pages 3-4 of the answer, that, in Koike,
two bits of memory for each bit of the word are sufficient to
perform 3/5 majority voting because it is suggested that “the
result of addition for each bit position is compared with one-
half of the repetition number to determine whether it is a ‘0'
or '1' (where 5/2=2.5)(column 2, lines 35-42)" so that it
would have been obvious that “the result of addition for each
bit position is reach [sic] a value of '3', the 2 bits of
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