Appeal No. 2006-1685
Application No. 10/081,369
We consider first the rejection of claims 1-4 and 9 based on
Cole and Tokuda. The examiner has indicated how these claims are
deemed to be rendered obvious by the teachings of Cole and Tokuda
[answer, pages 3-4]. Although the examiner does not address the
specific limitations of independent claim 1, the examiner asserts
that Cole teaches a detector for spectroscopic detection, and
Tokuda teaches a detector with stacked detectors with different
wavelength sensitivity and enhanced wavelength selectivity. The
examiner finds that it would have been obvious to the artisan to
use Tokuda’s detector in Cole’s device.
Appellants argue that Cole was not faced with the problem of
detecting a band of radiation that was wider than could be
detected by a single type of detector. They also argue that
Tokuda is concerned with distinguishing between two frequencies
and not detecting a broad spectrum passed by a bandpass filter.
Appellants argue that there is no suggestion to combine the
teachings of Cole and Tokuda. They assert that the combined
teachings would distinguish between different frequencies but
would not detect low and high wavelength bands as claimed.
Appellants insist that the collective teachings do not suggest
the claimed ability to detect a combination of adjacent
wavelength bands [brief, pages 10-12].
The examiner responds that the purpose of the claimed
invention is not relevant to the claimed structure. The examiner
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