Appeal No. 2003-1622
Application No. 09/146,529
The examiner maintains that the present claims lack a critical or essential
element to practice the invention. (See answer at pages 7-8.) The examiner goes
through a long analysis and evaluation of an attempt to build a superscalar processor
and concludes the second time period is a highly variable period which appellants have
provided no guidance on. (See answer at pages 8-10.) We find the examiner’s
analysis confusing with respect to the enablement rejection since the time period may
be set at any value greater than the maximum variation and there would be no problem,
but the operation may not be optimum. Clearly, the invention would be enabled, but
may or may not be optimum in its operation. We do not find this to be a fatal
enablement problem for independent claim 1, and we will not sustain the rejection of
independent claim 1 and its dependent claims.
Furthermore, we find that independent claims 14 and 21 do not contain the same
limitations to the specific periods. Therefore, the examiner’s rejection of these claims is
untenable. We do find similar limitations in dependent claim 20, but as above we do not
find a fatal enablement problem and we will not sustain the rejection of independent
claims 14 and 21, and we will not sustain the rejection of independent claims 14 and 21
and their dependent claims.
35 USC § 102
5
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