Appeal No. 2002-1578
Application No. 08/814,928
For the above reasons, since it is our opinion that the
Examiner’s prima facie case of obviousness based on the combination
of Leak and Terada has not been overcome by any convincing
arguments from Appellants, the Examiner’s 35 U.S.C. § 103(a)
rejection of representative independent claim 31, as well as claims
32-37 which fall with claim 31, is sustained.
Turning to a consideration of the Examiner’s separate 35
U.S.C. § 103(a) rejections of appealed claims 31-37 based on each
of, in the alternative, Appellants’ admitted prior art and Terada,
we cannot sustain either of these rejections. The Examiner’s basis
for each of these rejections relies on statements in the admitted
prior art (Appellants’ specification, page 1) and Terada (column 5,
lines 5-11) directed to the differences in time for performing
erase, write, and read operations. As correctly recognized by the
Examiner, both the admitted prior art and Terada explicitly
recognize the advantages of suspending an erase operation in order
to perform write and read operations because of the longer time
required to perform an erase operation relative to write and read
operations. From these prior art teachings, however, the Examiner
draws the unsupported conclusion as to the obviousness to the
skilled artisan of suspending a write operation in order to perform
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