Appeal No. 2000-1958
Application No. 08/854,620
Appellant further argues that the chemical shifts considered
by Meyer “are those related to the sample being measured, not
those in spectral lines and stored for reference purposes”
[brief-page 6], in contrast to the instant claims which require
the presence of “reference spectral line data including chemical
shifts” which are stored in a database memory and with which
measured spectral lines are compared.
Finally, appellant argues that oxygen and nitrogen which may
not be related to the target substance to be analyzed are
preliminarily measured and stored as a database memory for the
purpose of reference, but that this idea of preliminarily
providing a reference database, as in independent claims 1 and 4,
“is nowhere to be found in Meyer” [brief-page 7].
As to appellant’s first argument, our review of Robbat does
not find the disclosure therein limited, in any way, to only
those environments wherein chemical shifts present no problem.
It appears to us that Robbat is directed to a very general
purpose analytic device for determining the presence or absence
of a specific constituent in a mixture. Clearly, the mixture may
have constituents which will appear in compound form rather than
in purely elemental form. It is true that Robbat is devoid of
any teaching of chemical shifts but the examiner contends that
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