Appeal No. 2000-1204
Application No. 08/786,818
would have found it obvious to provide Rose et al. with
an AND gate in place of the LUT G for providing the AND
logic to the CMUX in order to reduce the circuitry in the
CLB. [Answer, pages 3-4.]
Appellants argue inter alia (brief, pages 4 and 5) that
“the Office Action has not provided any support for its
assertion that ‘the use of a LUT and the use of a logical gate
for providing a logical function are art recognized
equivalents,’” and that “it is insufficient to assert that one
of ordinary skill in the art might have been motivated to
replace LUT G with a random single gate.”
In In re Zurko, 258 F.3d, 1379, 1386, 59 USPQ2d 1693,
1697 (Fed. Cir. 2001), the Court stated that:
With respect to core factual findings in a
determination of patentability . . . the . . .
[Office] cannot simply reach conclusions based on
its own understanding or experience - or on its
assessment of what would be basic knowledge or
common sense. Rather, the . . . [Office] must point
to some concrete evidence in the record in support
of these findings.
In view of the complete absence of any evidence in the record
to support the examiner’s finding that “the use of a lookup
table and the use of a gate to provide a logic function are
both well known and are art recognized equivalents,” we cannot
agree with the examiner that the skilled artisan would have
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