Appeal No. 2002-1197
Application 09/131,167
performing the function (this appears to be the rationale in
Halliburton). Also, § 112, second paragraph, indefiniteness is
appropriate because the purely functional limitations in the
"wherein" clauses are not permitted under the Halliburton
rationale and, hence, are not definite claim limitations.
Obviousness
Claims 1-4, 8-28, and 32-37
The issue with respect to the independent claims in this
group is whether the combination of Koski and Haneda discloses or
suggests that the "filter coefficients of said adaptive filter
are updated only when a prevailing value of the output signal of
said microphone is within a predetermined range of possible
output signal values" (claim 1 and an almost identical limitation
in claim 13), or "variables of said adaptive system are updated
only when a prevailing value of the source signal is within a
predetermined range of possible source signal values" (claim 17),
or "updating filter coefficients of the adaptive filter . . .
only when a prevailing value of the communications signal is
within a predetermined range of possible signal values"
(claim 25). Initially, we must interpret these limitations
without reading in limitations from the specification. The
limitation of "within a predetermined range of possible signal
values" is very broad and does not exclude the "predetermined
- 6 -
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007