Appeal No. 2000-1703
Application No. 08/963,545
infrared only when mobility is required. Thus, the Examiner has
failed to establish a prima facie case of obviousness as we find
no teaching or suggestion in Gutzwiller that would have motivated
one of ordinary skill in the art to rearrange the power-line
carrier medium of Gutzwiller and transmit the control signals to
a first non-master node which repeats the signal to a second non-
master node outside a transmission range of the master node.
We note that independent claim 22 requires the transmission
of local information from a second non-master node to a master
node via a first non-master node, opposite to the order of the
transmission recited in claim 20. Furthermore, independent claim
23 recites a node in a building network which repeats the
received information either to another node or to a master node.
As discussed above with respect to claim 20, Gutzwiller does not
teach a non-master node which repeats the control signal received
from the home controller instead, all Gutzwiller’s appliances are
connected to the controller via power-line carrier. Therefore,
the Examiner has failed to establish a prima facie case of
obviousness as the applied prior art neither teaches nor suggests
all the claimed limitations. Accordingly, the Examiner’s
rejection of independent claims 20, 22 and 23 as well as claim
9
Page: Previous 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007