Appeal No. 2001-0338
Application No. 08/932,953
note that Appellants have argued these claims as a single group
on pages 11-14. We will thereby treat claim 8 as the
representative claim for this group.
Appellants point out that claim 8 recites "reduces said
intensity gradually." Appellants argue that the combination of
Schoolman, Tonosaki and Ninomiya does not teach this limitation.
See page 12 of the brief.
In response, the Examiner shows that Ninomiya reduces the
intensity level of a display by 5% of the brightness in each
waiting period. The Examiner points to column 9, lines 47-62.
Upon our review of Ninomiya, we find that Ninomiya does
indeed teach "control that reduces said intensity gradually" as
recited in Appellants' claim 8. We find that Ninomiya teaches
that the reduced brightness level means a level to which the
brightness is lowered after each waiting period by 5%. See
column 9, lines 47-67. We find that the lowering by 5% steps
meets the claimed limitation of gradually reducing the intensity.
We note that the broadest reasonable interpretation of this
language does not require an analog reduction but could be done
with small incremental steps as taught by Ninomiya.
Appellants argue that the Examiner does not provide a proper
reason to combine the references. Appellants argue that the
1212
Page: Previous 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007