Appeal No. 2002-1383
Application No. 08/868,972
described by appellants would be relevant in operation of the Subramanian system, or
in operation of the Subramanian system as modified by the teachings of Suzuki.
Certainly, the examiner has not provided any convincing explanation as to why the
specific requirements of claim 9 are disclosed or suggested by the references.
We conclude that the rejection of claim 9 lacks the proper factual foundation for a
showing of prima facie obviousness. We do not sustain the rejection of claim 9 under
35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over Subramanian and Suzuki.
Section 103 -- Claims 14, 15, 24, and 28 over Subramanian and Fisk
Instant claim 14 incorporates the limitations of claim 13. The combination of
Subramanian and Hiller has been applied against claim 13, and we consider that
rejection to be unfounded (infra). Since Fisk does not remedy the deficiencies in the
rejection applied against claim 13, we cannot sustain the rejection of claim 14.
We have considered the remainder of appellants’ arguments (Brief at 16-17),
which are not persuasive for the reasons previously discussed. We select claim 28 as
representative, and find that transmitting the instructions over a “communications
interface” is taught at least by Subramanian, as we noted in the discussion regarding
claim 29.
We thus sustain the rejection of claims 15, 24, and 28 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as
being unpatentable over Subramanian and Fisk, but do not sustain the rejection of claim
14.
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