Appeal No. 2004-0129
Application No. 09/230,720
appellant and the examiner. As a consequence of our review, we
will reverse the obviousness rejections of claims 26 through 52.
Regarding claims 26 through 50, appellant argues (Brief,
pages 8-9) that although Spinner discloses that actuator
controllers are coupled together in a local area network (LAN)
and have peer-to-peer communication, a host controller system 20
is required to transmit setpoints to the actuator controllers and
thereby operates as a master for the controllers. As such,
Spinner's actuator controllers are not part of a decentralized
communications hardware structure. We agree.
The examiner asserts (Answer, pages 6) that "SPINNER et al.
specifically teach peer-to-peer communication between the
actuator controllers, exclusive of the host controller system" in
addition to the centralized control in which the host transmits
information to the controllers. The examiner contends (Answer,
page 6) that "[t]his decentralized communication accomplishes
controlling the operation of the actuators, by calculating new
setpoints dependent upon the statuses of adjacent actuators,
using algorithms which are resident within the actuator
controllers, NOT in the host controller system."
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