Appeal No. 2000-1540
Application No. 09099,617
If one could show that Nickerson discloses a situation
wherein there might be only one block in a frame, then there
would be prior art against which we could apply the examiner’s
interpretation. But, as it stands, the examiner’s position
appears to rely solely on appellants’ own claim as a “prior art”
reference applied against the claim. That is, the examiner uses
the term, “at least one block” to somehow show that the prior art
recognized that only one block per frame may be employed and we
simply have nothing on the record to show that. Moreover, the
examiner’s interpretation appears to excise the claim limitation
regarding the target block bit rate being “selected in accordance
with a mean absolute difference (Mad) of said block” because,
under the examiner’s interpretation, it would be immaterial as to
how the target block bit rate is selected. It appears to us that
we would need to somehow ignore this specific claim language
regarding the mean absolute difference if we adopted the
examiner’s rationale. Unless there is some good and sufficient
reason for ignoring a specific claim limitation, e.g., a process
limitation in a product-by-process claim, each and every claim
limitation must be given weight when applying a rejection under
35 U.S.C. 102.
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