Appeal No. 2001-2030
Application No. 08/874,046
and reply briefs, Bertsch is directed to a conventional
programmable distributed appliance control system over which the
instant invention is an improvement. That is, Bertsch addresses
individual electronic appliances by the use of a single protocol,
rather than allowing component groups to utilize different
communication protocols, data exchange formats and/or command
sets.
While the examiner finds different protocols in Bertsch in
the statement, by Bertsch, that a CEBUS message is automatically
translated to a signal format “that is appropriate for the
capabilities of the appliance,” at column 4, lines 42-44, of
Bertsch, we agree with appellants that CEBUS is a single
protocol, i.e., a set of conventions governing the format of
message exchange between two communications terminals and there
is no evidence of record that the CEBUS protocol is itself formed
by a plurality of protocols [reply brief-page 3]. We further
agree with appellants that it is not reasonable to say that each
different command or data format used within a protocol, such as
CEBUS, is itself a protocol, as the examiner appears to be
arguing.
Accordingly, since independent claim 1 and, by extension,
dependent claim 6, both require “components of any particular
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