Appeal No. 2000-1361 Page 4
Application No. 08/933,880
argued. Accordingly, the § 112 rejection of claims 3 and 6
through 8 is sustained pro forma. Appellant indicates (both in
the brief and during the oral hearing) that upon reversal of the
rejections under §§ 102 and 103, Appellant will submit
appropriate amendments to overcome the § 112 rejection.
At the outset, we note that Appellant does not separately
argue the patentability of the independent claims and indicates
that claims 1 through 8 stand or fall together (brief, page 4).
Therefore, we will consider the claims as one group and will
treat claim 1 as the representative claim of the group.
Appellant argues that Richardson cannot anticipate the
claimed invention since instead of an enable signal, output
values are sent from comparator blocks 510-560 to output
registers 570-630 (brief, page 6). Appellant further compares
Richardson with the claimed analysis unit, which does not supply
the output values and merely provides an enable signal for the
output register as soon as the combinatorial block has finished
the processing of the input values (brief, pages 6 & 7).
In response to Appellant’s arguments, the Examiner indicates
that an enable signal is sent by each of comparator blocks 510-
560 to the corresponding one of output registers 570-630 which
causes the register to output its stored value. The Examiner
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