Appeal No. 2006-0673 Page 6
Application No. 09/919,555
Here, the appellants argue claims 1, 2, 4-16, and 45-54, which are subject to the
same grounds of rejection, as a group. (Reply Br. at 8-14 and 23.) We select claim 1
as the sole claim on which to decide the appeal of the group.
With this representation in mind, rather than reiterate the positions of the
examiner or the appellants in toto, we focus on the point of contention therebetween.
The examiner asserts, "The instant claims are drawn to methods of array manufacture,
not array use." (Examiner's Answer at 21.) "[W]ithin the context of the instant claims . .
. the stored data does not provide functionality within the instantly claimed method."
(Id.) He then makes the following findings.
[Cattell '915] teaches the claimed method of array manufacture including
saving in a memory array related data i.e. saving biological data, step 434,
Fig. 6[,] which includes information used by the user in reading the array
as defined in ¶[¶]39-40 wherein during array fabrication information
required for reading and processing the array (e.g. missing features,
misplaced feature, features of incorrect dimension, other physical
characteristics) is stored such that the person reading data from the array
will interpret the data correctly ( ¶[¶] 5, 11, 15, 41, 45).
(Id. at 20.) The appellants argue "that the[ir] [claimed] array related data are not simply
a compilation of facts, but are instructions (i.e., executable by a processor) for
selecting one or more machine readable algorithms for use by a processor on how to
read the array or process data from the read array," (Reply Br. at 14);"the instructions
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