Appeal No. 2002-1383
Application No. 08/868,972
Appellants also allege that claim 29 distinguishes over Subramanian because of
an alleged lack of showing transmission (of instructions for assigning a packet to a
virtual circuit) to a destination over a communications interface. On the contrary,
Subramanian shows a communications interface in several figures (e.g., Figure 2)
connecting the supervisor to the network nodes. Subramanian, further, expressly
describes (col. 7, ll. 10-20) several communications interfaces (e.g., Ethernet) suitable
for sending the instructions for assigning packets to particular virtual circuits.
We are thus not persuaded that any of the claims rejected as obvious over the
teachings of Subramanian have been rejected in error. We sustain the rejection of
claims 8, 12, 18, 23, 25, 27, and 29 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over
Subramanian.
Section 103 -- Claim 9 over Subramanian and Suzuki
Appellants argue that, although Suzuki refers to “heavy traffic” and “trouble” in
the passages cited in the rejection over Subramanian and Suzuki, the reference does
not specify “cell interleaving.” Retransmission due to a cell interleaving problem is thus
not shown by the references. (Brief at 16.)
We find appellants’ argument persuasive because the only clear description of a
“cell interleaving” problem that we have on this record appears to reside in the instant
specification, at page 31, line 1 et seq. Although we have found that all limitations of
base claim 1 are met by Subramanian, it is not clear that the cell interleaving problem
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