Appeal No. 2005-2418
Application 09/932,639
reversal of claim 25. Indeed, Endo does have the capability to
do that.
Secondly, the optical coupler set forth at the end of
claim 30 on appeal is stated to receive separate optical wave-
length bands from multiple lasers with at least one of these
multiple lasers being a tunable laser. We agree with appellant’s
views expressed at pages 9 and 10 of the Brief that Endo does not
teach tunable lasers. A generic type of light emitting element
22 is taught to be within the optical signal generator switch 20
in detail in figure 2 of Endo. Even if we accept that the
artisan would have considered this type of device to have been a
light emitting diode (bottom of Brief, page 16), and even if the
artisan would have considered that such a generic light emitting
element 22 may have been in the form of a solid state laser, we
would be exercising speculation if we were to agree with the
examiner’s view that such could include a tunable laser. Because
in the figure 4 embodiment separate optical signal generator
switches 20 are utilized for each of the respective manual
switches 3 to operate separate devices, the artisan would have
had no need to have utilized a tunable laser for such light
emitting elements, only a fixed frequency laser at most.
Therefore, we reverse the rejection of independent claim 30.
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