Appeal No. 2006-0439
Application 09/765,754
Of the subject matter of representative independent claim 1 on appeal, the
focus of appellants’ arguments is the feature recited therein of “each class of bits
comprising a plurality of contiguous bits of the frame.” It was the amendment filed by
appellants on June 28, 2004 in this application that led to the introduction of the entire
wherein clause of representative independent 1 on appeal of which the quoted material
is a part. The justification for this additional material added to claim 1 was said at
page 10 of the remarks of the amendment to be based upon the illustrated
embodiments in figures 5 and 6 as well as their corresponding discussion at
specification page 9, line 24 through page 11, line 4. However, there is no discussion
or showing among these respective portions of the specification as filed which justifies
the inclusion of the term “contiguous” as a basis to characterize the presently claimed
invention on appeal. While it may be fairly characterized that these portions of the
specification as filed generally indicate that a class of bits comprise a plurality of bits,
they are not necessarily recited in the noted portion to be contiguous to each other
within a given class or between classes.
With this understanding, we are in full agreement with the examiner’s analysis
in the answer. The claims do not recite and the specification does not indicate that the
claimed “stream of information” is a serial bit stream of information, nor do the claims
recite and the specification justify that any particular related bits within a class are
serially presented. Appellants’ apparent definition of the word “contiguous”
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