Appeal No. 2002-1885 Page 7
Application No. 08/966,453
connector 16 of the admitted prior art would render the system of
figure 16 of Suzuki inoperative. Figure 11 of Suzuki presents a
representation of the element to raster conversion that takes
place within image processor 25. If the conversion was performed
by CPU 22, the CPU 22 and bus 20 would be busy for long periods
of time. It is argued that if the image processor 25 and the bus
30 of figure 16 of Suzuki were removed and replaced with the non-
processing connector 16 of the admitted prior art, then element
information 60 would be provided directly to raster memory 31,
and printer 50 would fail to operate because it would be provided
with element information, not raster data. The examiner responds
(answer, page 14) that the modification would not render Suzuki
inoperative, and that the modification would have been obvious
because
the CPU 22 in the Suzuki patent (see figure 16) can
perform the conversion process into raster data, as
admitted by the Appellant on page 15 of the Appeal
Brief filed June 19, 2001 and as disclosed by Suzuki
(U.S. Patent 4,722,064) at column 5, lines 43-56 and
column 7, lines 48-55.
At the outset, we note that we do not agree with the
examiner that 25 and 30 of Suzuki represent connectors. Suzuki
discloses (col. 5, line 32) image processor 25. Image processor
25 reads element information from element memory 23 and converts
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