Appeal No. 2001-1444
Application No. 08/994,706
776 F.2d 281, 293, 227 USPQ 657, 664 (Fed. Cir. 1985), cert.
denied, 475 U.S. 1017 (1986); ACS Hosp. Sys., Inc. v.
Montefiore Hosp., 732 F.2d 1572, 1577, 221 USPQ 929, 933 (Fed.
Cir. 1984). These showings by the Examiner are an essential part
of complying with the burden of presenting a prima facie case of
obviousness. Note In re Oetiker, 977 F.2d 1443, 1445, 24 USPQ2d
1443, 1444 (Fed. Cir. 1992).
We consider first the Examiner’s 35 U.S.C. § 103(a)
rejection of appealed claims 18-20, 22, and 23 as being
unpatentable over Yamashita. With respect to independent claim
18, the sole independent claim on appeal, Appellants’ arguments
in response to the Examiner’s obviousness rejection assert a
failure by the Examiner to establish a prima facie case of
obviousness since all of the limitations of claim 18 are not
taught or suggested by the Yamashita reference. At pages 12-15
of the Brief and page 7 of the Reply Brief, Appellants’ arguments
focus on the contention that Yamashita has no teaching or
suggestion of selecting the load resistance value RL to be
approximately equal to the characteristic impedance ZO as
explicitly required by the language of claim 18. Appellants
further assert that the fundamental operation of the Yamashita
circuitry, which involves the generation of a reflective wave to
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