Appeal No. 2006-0621 Application No. 09/938,237 of Miyawaki with the teachings of Yamanaka. Appellants note that absent a proper motivation to combine the references, there is no prima facie case of obviousness [reply brief]. We will not sustain the examiner’s rejection of claims 1, 3, 6, 7, 10, 11 and 21 because we agree with appellants that the record in this case fails to establish a prima facie case of obviousness. Although Miyawaki discloses a document processing system of the type recited in the claimed invention, Miyawaki fails to disclose how the various components, such as the marking engine and the resources, are interconnected. Miyawaki only vaguely teaches that serial communication units 16 communicate information with a document feeder, document finisher, and the like [column 4, lines 8-11]. There is no description whatsoever of the manner in which these elements are interconnected. There is also no description in Miyawaki of any synchronization between these elements. The examiner simply asserts that some general synchronization would be required for proper operation of the system. Thus, the concept of synchronization is totally lacking in Miyawaki, but the examiner asserts that synchronization would be necessary in Miyawaki. The examiner proposes to modify the synchronization of Miyawaki, which, as noted above, is not 8Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 NextLast modified: November 3, 2007