Appeal No. 2006-0681
Application No. 09/072,412
the language of the claims. Without more, Appellant has not shown
how the Examiner erred in the rejection of claims 1, 5, and 32.
IV. Whether the Rejection of Claims 31 and 32 Under
35 U.S.C. § 103 is proper?
It is our view, after consideration of the record before us,
that the evidence relied upon and the level of skill in the
particular art would have suggested to one of ordinary skill in
the art the invention as set forth in claims 31 and 32.
Accordingly, we affirm.
With respect to independent claim 31, Appellant argues at
pages 17-18 of the brief, the range of gain values in figure 2 of
Murayama are arbitrarily chosen and there is no basis to change
this as equalizers are not designed with a specific goal in mind.
We find this argument unpersuasive. While it is correct that
the equalizer in Murayama does not limit the gains differently
for different ranges, the proper question is whether the
combination of references suggests such a modification. We find
such a suggestion in figure 4 of Bartlett. At each given
frequency (note) the response falls at a different specific
value. Thus, different gain values are needed for each frequency
and only a limited range of gain values would be useful to the
equalization of a given frequency. This is more than a
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