Appeal No. 2002-2309
Application No. 09/099,386
declaration (pages 2 and 3) states that the portion of the
disclosure (specification, page 31) that states “[t]he memory
management system may only have partial knowledge of the cache
system states” provides written description support for the
questioned claimed phrase “wherein the memory manager does not
internally duplicate a coherence state of blocks of the caches.”
In response, the examiner contends (answer, page 14) that “the
memory management system has some (partial) knowledge of the
cache states” and that he “does not see how partial knowledge of
the cache state could be considered as expressly stating not
knowing the cache state.” We agree with the examiner’s
contentions. The quoted portion of the specification does not
state that the system has no knowledge of the cache states, and
the “broad disclosure of ‘alternate scenarios’ does not provide
sufficient support for the specific claim language regarding not
using duplicate cache tags” (answer, page 14). The remainder of
the Stevens’ declaration presents nothing more than pure
conjecture. Appellants ask the question (brief, page 12) “[i]f
duplicate cache tags were used (such as in Nishtala), the
specification would ‘cry out’ for a mention, yet no mention is
made.” We disagree. Notwithstanding the knowledge attributed to
the skilled artisan, appellants must still describe in the
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