Appeal No. 2000-1900
Application No. 08/669,937
prima facie case of obviousness. The burden is, therefore, upon
Appellant to come forward with evidence and/or arguments which
persuasively rebut the Examiner’s prima facie case of
obviousness. Only those arguments actually made by Appellant
have been considered in this decision. Arguments which Appellant
could have made but chose not to make in the Brief have not been
considered (see 37 CFR § 1.192(a)).
In response, Appellant contends (Brief, pages 7-9) that the
Examiner has not established a prima facie case of obviousness
since the proposed combination of Wei and Saleh does not teach or
suggest all of the limitations of appealed independent claim 1,
the representative claim for Appellant’s first suggested grouping
(including claims 1, 3, and 4). Initially, Appellant argues
(id., at page 8) that, in contrast to the language of claim 1,
the Wei and Saleh references are not directed to TDMA
communication systems. Further, Appellant asserts, pointing to
language at column 4, lines 54-68 in Wei and column 5, lines 24-
35 in Saleh, that “ . . . both Wei and Saleh disclose “hard”
decision features and do not disclose or suggest soft decision
features as claimed . . . . ” (Id., Appellant’s emphasis).
After careful review of the applied Wei and Saleh references
in light of the arguments of record, we are in general agreement
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