Appeal No. 2004-2153
Application No. 09/923,510
to have the ability to send control information at
predetermined intervals of time. Therefore, it would
have been obvious to one skilled in the art at the
time the invention was made to have time division
multiplexed control and data packets, as taught by
Reichman, in the device of Willebrand (answer, page 4).
From the foregoing, it appears the examiner is of the view
that it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the
art at the time of appellants’ invention to make a wholesale
substitution of time division multiplexing, like that mentioned
in Reichman, for the frequency/wave division multiplexing
specifically called for and used in Willebrand. However, our
review of the disclosures and teachings of the two patents relied
upon by the examiner does not support any such sweeping
substitution of one form or type of multiplexing for another in
the optical communication system disclosed by Willebrand.
The disclosure in Willebrand (e.g., col. 6, lines 37-47)
specifically discusses conducting optical signals over the free-
space (24) and the fiber links (26) therein using laser beams
whose fundamental frequency or wavelength “is encoded by signals
of other frequencies which contain the information to be
communicated,” and generally refers to this as “wave division
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