Appeal No. 2005-1995
Application 09/133,741
buffer of Rossin with the circular buffer of Sutherland "to built
[sic] a simple storage device capable or [sic] replacing oldest
data with the newest data in clipping operation in which vector
length are always changing" (EA4).
Appellant argues that none of the references alone or in
combination teach or suggest the limitation of using "only a
single circular buffer" to store input and output vertices of a
primitive, as recited in independent claims 1, 16, and 48.
The examiner responds that Rossin's buffer 304 is the only
memory that stores both input and output vertices and the other
buffer 306 does not store both input and output vertices of a
primitive (EA9). The examiner finds that since Rossin "can shift
data from one memory location (the output list location) to
another location (the input list location) ..., this clearly
suggests a characteristic of a circular buffer" (EA11-12) which
suggests substitution of the ring buffer in Sutherland (EA12).
Appellant replies that Rossin requires an additional memory
device 306 in order to perform the clipping process and,
therefore, does not meet the limitation of using "only a single
circular buffer" to store input and output vertices of a
primitive (RBr2). It is also argued that shifting vertices from
the input list location to the output list location does not
suggest a circular buffer (RBr2-3).
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