Appeal No. 2004-0180
Application No. 09/124,642
three such characters in succession may indicate a loss of
synchronization, the artisan would have found it obvious that
three characters (e.g., idle 1 characters as taught by Jordan) in
succession would also be applicable to “resynchronization.”
We will also sustain the rejection of claims 3 and 15 (Group
III) under 35 U.S.C. § 103.
These claims add the limitation that the sequence of
predetermined characters comprises “seven successive idle 1
characters.”
While appellants argue that the applied references do not
make this limitation obvious, we disagree for reasons supra.
Whether the number of characters is three or seven, it would
appear to be a “design choice,” as indicated by the examiner at
page 9 of the answer, since the artisan would recognize that “as
the number of repetitions increases so does the reliability of
synchronization but at the expense of transmission time and
bandwidth.”
Moreover, we note, again, that appellants have ascribed no
particular criticality to the use of “seven” successive idle 1
characters. At page 11 of the brief, appellants appear to argue
criticality of using seven such characters, in referring to “page
6, lines 10-15 of the application.” However, our review of this
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