Appeal No. 2005-2512
Reexamination Control No. 90/006,431
criticized the First Ho Declaration because it is not signed by both inventors. Second
Office Action 65.
Appellant’s “Response to Second Official Action”19 was accompanied by a
“Second Declaration by Inventor” (hereinafter “Second Ho Declaration”). As correctly
noted by appellant at page 23 of that response, MPEP § 716.10 does not require that all
inventors sign an attribution declaration. In any event, the absence of a signature or
supporting declaration by Tuan is adequately addressed at pages 13-14 of the brief,
which explain that Tuan is one of the founders of and is employed by Nassda, the third-
party requestor, which party as noted above is also a litigation opponent. As will
appear, the “our team” language which the examiner found objectionable in the First Ho
Declaration does not appear in the Second Ho Declaration.
We will begin by determining the meaning of the term “RailMill” as used in the
Second
Ho Declaration. As already noted, the block labeled “Rail Mill” in Figure 1 of the ‘952
patent includes transistor network simulation engine 116, power net simulation engine
118, and also ChipViewer 120. That designation is consistent with the RailMill
documents, issued by Epic, which describe the RailMill product as including all three of
19 Papert No. 29, received July 7, 2004.
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