Appeal No. 2000-1961
Application 08/840,200
Appellants further argue that the prior art of Hill, Hale,
and Arcella employ a fixed baseline against which comparisons are
made (Br8). As noted in the analysis of claim 16, supra,
claim 16 does not require an evolving baseline and does not
distinguish over the fixed baselines in Hill, Hale, and Arcella,
which were determined "on-line," i.e., while the mechanisms were
in operation.
Claim 18
Claim 18 recites "wherein the on-line operation of said
mechanism includes repeated opening and closing operation of a
valve device and the time between baseline valve operations is
compared with the time between corresponding on-line valve
operations."
The examiner states that it would have been obvious that in
the normal operation of a plant there may be repeated openings
and closings of valves and that it would be important to know if
there is a timing difference between the actual time between
on-line valve operations and the time between baseline valve
operations because it would indicate that either a problem has
developed in the mechanism or some change has occurred in the
system in which the mechanism operates to result in such a timing
difference (FR6-7).
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