Appeal No. 2001-2302
Application No. 09/002,404
Appellants submit that our decision, in effect, constituted a new ground of
rejection. We agreed with appellants, as set forth on page 4 of the prior decision, to the
extent that the reference (Markstein) failed to expressly disclose that the “working
precision” width is identical to the width of the floating-point registers of the associated
processor. We agreed, further, there was insufficient evidence in the record to
establish that proposition.
We interpreted language in claim 1 in a manner somewhat broader than the
examiner’s apparent reading, and pointed to teachings in Markstein that we found
would have suggested floating-point data types having floating-point objects with
sufficient range and precision such that the width of the memory representations of the
objects fell within the range claimed by appellants.
A rejection must be considered “new” if the appellant has not had a fair
opportunity to react to the thrust of the rejection. In re Kronig, 539 F.2d 1300, 1302,
190 USPQ 425, 426 (CCPA 1976). Because we disagreed with the examiner with
respect to an apparent critical finding underlying the rejection, and because our
interpretation of language in the instant claims was different (i.e., broader) than the
examiner’s apparent interpretation, we will characterize our affirmance of the rejection
as a new ground of rejection under 37 CFR § 1.196(b).
Appellants point to nothing in our opinion that we consider as corresponding to
any allegation of error with respect to the merits of the decision. To the extent
appellants’ request may be construed in any fashion as challenging the merits of the
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