Appeal No. 2001-1678
Application No. 09/001,729
9 of the Answer that the “distributed real-time control systems” is “for a telephone
company.” We find no convincing rationale from the examiner for modifying the
invention of Klingman in the manner required by instant claim 6. Claims 7 and 8
incorporate the limitations of claim 6. We do not sustain the rejection of claims 6-8
under 35 U.S.C. § 103.
For the rejection of claims 9 and 10, the examiner adds the teachings of Higgins
to those of Klingman. Higgins appears to be relied upon as showing that maintaining a
status table at each node and examining a status table when receiving an incoming call
at a node in order to route the incoming call was well known. (Answer at 4-5.)
Appellants’ position is that even if the teachings of the references were combined, there
would be no “routing of calls” as claimed. (Brief at 14-15.)
We agree with the examiner (e.g., Answer at 9) to the extent that instant claim 9
does not require “telephone” calls, but may also refer to “data” calls. Klingman, in fact,
uses the term “call” in the description of data links (e.g., col. 3, ll. 33-50). Instant claim
9, however, requires that information be maintained in a status table at each node for
facilitating routing of calls to other nodes.
As shown in Figure 1 of Klingman, and described in the above-noted section of
column 3, the reference discloses that party 1 connects with party 2, which in turn
connects with party 3, in such fashion until each party is connected with two other
parties in a topology appropriate for a ring network. The implicit question which the
rejection fails to answer is: why maintain data to facilitate routing of calls to other nodes,
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