Appeal No. 2002-1498
Application No. 09/042,202
claim 20, dependent therefrom, and not separately argued, under
35 U.S.C. 102(e).
With regard to independent claims 14 and 30, we take a
different view. These claims include an intermediate step of, or
second means for, loading the credit register with a zero prior
to the step of transferring the initial credit value into the
credit register. Just prior to initialization in Barker, it is
not clear what, exactly, the value is in the credit register but
it is clear that, at initialization, the credit value of n is
loaded into both the debit register and the credit register.
Thus, we cannot say, with assurance, that Barker, at any time,
actually loads the credit register with a zero, let alone at some
time prior to the step of transferring, as required by claims 14
and 30. For similar reasons, we will not sustain the rejection
of claims 3 and 19 under 35 U.S.C. 102(e) since these claims also
contain the limitation of loading the credit register with a zero
prior to the step of transferring.
With regard to claims 5 and 21, these claims recite further
specifics regarding the transferring step, viz., that the initial
credit value is placed into a packet which is bound for the first
node, that the debit register is decremented by the initial
credit value and the packet is sent to the first node. We find
-9–
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