Appeal No. 2001-2447
Application No. 09/085,143
OPINION
Appellants argue that the Examiner has not shown that the applied prior art generates a
technology-independent description of a system that specifies both a signal and a selected metal
layer for the signal (brief, pages 9 & 10 and reply brief, page 2). Appellants further point out that
the portions of the description of Figure 2 of Rostoker, as relied on by the examiner, are
unrelated to metal layers for signal routing and the particular recited limitations of claim 1 (reply
brief, page 3). Further referring to the embodiment depicted in Figure 9 of Rostoker, Appellants
assert that the back-annotating of technology-dependent information into technology-independent
steps of the design is not the same as generating a technology-independent system description
that specifies both a signal and a selected metal layer for the signal (reply brief, page 4).
In response to Appellants’ arguments, the Examiner quotes from different parts of
Rostoker relating to technology independent features and creating a vehicle for providing
structural information at the behavioral description level (answer, pages 3 & 4). The Examiner
further relies on Rostoker’s description of partitioning behaviorally-verified design in the form of
back annotation and concludes that such fine tuning of the device description leads to the
claimed method (answer, page 5).
A rejection for anticipation under section 102 requires that the four corners of a single
prior art document describe every element of the claimed invention, either expressly or
inherently, such that a person of ordinary skill in the art could practice the invention without
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