Appeal No. 2002-1383
Application No. 08/868,972
the Board is free to select a single claim from each group of claims subject to a common
ground of rejection as representative of all claims in that group and to decide the appeal
of that rejection based solely on the selected representative claim.”).
Section 102 -- Claims 1, 2, 6, 7, 10, 11, 16, 19, 21, and 22 over Subramanian
Instant claim 11 recites the step of providing an element for performing the step
of establishing a plurality of virtual circuits from one node to at least one other node as a
virtual circuit bunch in response to a single request. In view of the proper interpretation
of “virtual circuit bunch,” as set forth supra, we find the claim to be anticipated at least
by Subramanian’s description at columns 7 and 8, quoted supra, of establishing user-to-
user connectivity (call set-up and tear-down) by a single request from the client to the
supervisor. A client can thus request the supervisor to set up and tear down virtual
channels to another user (i.e., another client). Although not a requirement of claim 11,
we also note that the supervisor notifies each intermediate switch to update broadcast
and translation tables in the respective switch to allow for proper switching of cells
transmitted by the client.
Appellants’ remarks in response to the rejection, in the main, ultimately rely on
the term “virtual circuit bunch.” The arguments are founded on the allegation that
Subramanian fails to disclose a “virtual circuit bunch.” Although we agree to the extent
that Subramanian does not use the term, we are not persuaded that the number of
related virtual circuits set up by request to the supervisor cannot be considered a “virtual
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