Appeal No. 2005-0001
Application No. 09/268,902
On page 28 of the brief, appellant argues that the claims in this group
depend either on claim 6 or 21 and that the arguments presented with respect to
claims 6 and 21 also apply. Further, on pages 28 and 29 of the brief, appellant
argues that the office action fails to provide particular findings as to the reasons
to combine.
The examiner rejected the claims in this group under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as
being unpatentable over Mitsuhashi in view of Huddleston, Tuan and Brasen.
(See pages 7 and 8 of the answer). The examiner states on page 8 of the
answer “it would have been obvious … to modify the invention of Mitsuhashi and
Huddleston … because as suggested by Brasen, the combination would have
prevented failure of the circuit by providing a method of insuring that the current
circuit values don’t exceed the electromigration limit (column 5, lines 29-41).”
Claim 12, depends upon claim 6 and adds the limitation “ the operation of
mapping the power-bus grid further includes accepting a length and a width of
the wire segments.” As stated supra, we find that the combination of Mitsuhashi
in view of Huddleston and Tuan teach all of the limitations of claims 6 and 21.
We find that Mitsuhashi teaches, in conjunction with determining the current
density the widths of the power source lines are considered (see column 16, lines
21-22) and in conjunction with the voltage drop analysis the admittance (inverse
of resistance) of the power bus grid is determined (see column 15, lines 10-45).
However, Mitsuhashi does not teach how the admittance (inverse resistance) is
determined. We find that Brasen teaches a system for circuit analysis in the
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