Appeal No.2003-1091
Application No. 09/484,248
operation to approximate the language of appealed claim 14, all
currently selected delay elements would have to be deselected, a
value shift performed in the shift register, followed by a
selection of the newly selected elements, an operation not
supported by the disclosure of Butcher. Accordingly, since all
of the limitations of claim 14 are not present in the disclosure
of Butcher, the Examiner’s 35 U.S.C. § 102(b) rejection of claim
14 is not sustained.
We also do not sustain the Examiner’s 35 U.S.C. § 103(a)
rejection of claims 15-17, dependent on claim 14, in which the
Takano reference is added to Butcher to address the logic gate
details of these claims. We find nothing, however, in Takano
which would overcome the innate deficiency of Butcher in
disclosing the single step selection of a plurality of delay
elements as discussed supra.
We do, however, sustain the Examiner’s 35 U.S.C. § 103(a)
rejections of claims 2-8, 11-13, and 18-20 based on the
combination of Butcher and Takano, and of claims 9 and 10 based
on the combination of Butcher and the admitted prior art. Our
review of the Examiner’s analysis at pages 5-8 of the Answer
reveals no error in the Examiner’s position. Appellant’s
arguments in the principal Brief with respect to these claims
8
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007