Appeal No. 2002-2309
Application No. 09/099,386
disclosure their contribution to the art pertaining to “duplicate
cache tags” or the lack of such cache tags in the memory
management system. Appellants’ arguments (brief, page 8 and 9)
to the contrary notwithstanding, the burden of proof properly
shifted to appellants after the examiner successfully
demonstrated that the noted claim limitation did not have any
express written description support in the disclosure. Thus, we
agree with the examiner’s position (answer, pages 13 through 16)
that neither appellants’ arguments nor the Stevens’ declaration
proves that the memory management system does not internally
duplicate “a coherence state of blocks of the cache,” and the
rejection of claims 1 through 11 and 24 is sustained because “the
negative limitations recited in the present claims, which did not
appear in the specification as filed, introduce new concepts and
violate the description requirement of the first paragraph of
35 U.S.C. 112.” Ex parte Grasselli, 231 USPQ 393, 394 (Bd. App.
1983), aff’d mem., 738 F.2d 453 (Fed. Cir. 1984).
Turning to the obviousness rejection of independent claims 1
through 24, the examiner has made extensive fact findings
concerning the teachings of Nishtala (answer, pages 3 through 6),
but the appellants only take issue (brief, pages 18 through 21)
with the examiner’s finding (answer, page 6) that “[i]t would
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