Appeal No. 2000-1900
Application No. 08/669,937
After careful review of the McConnell and Boyd references,
we find none of Appellant’s arguments to be persuasive. In our
view, Appellant’s arguments focus on the individual differences
between the limitations of representative claims 7 and 17 and
each of the applied references. It is apparent, however, from
the Examiner’s line of reasoning in the Answer, that the basis
for the obviousness rejection is the combination of McConnell and
Boyd. One cannot show nonobviousness by attacking references
individually where the rejections are based on combinations of
references. In re Keller, 642 F.2d 413, 425, 208 USPQ 871,
881 (CCPA 1981); In re Merck & Co., 800 F.2d 1091, 1097, 231 USPQ
375, 380 (Fed. Cir. 1986).
In other words, while Appellant contends that McConnell
lacks a teaching of a TDMA channel application, the suggestion to
apply concatenated coding schemes to TDMA systems is clearly
provided by Boyd. Further, although Appellant argues that Boyd
has no disclosure of the correction of erasures, this feature is
clearly taught by McConnell in which, as disclosed at column 5,
lines 40-60, erasures for a block of symbols are marked or
generated at the first (inner or Hamming) decoder, and corrected
at the second (outer or Reed-Solomon) decoder.
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