Appeal No. 2006-1685
Application No. 10/081,369
asserts that Cole, Tokuda and appellants all perform the same
function with a Fabry-Perot filter of scanning ranges of
bandwidths [answer, pages 6-9].
Appellants respond that the examiner’s answer fails to point
out where in either reference the claim elements of a first
detector and a second detector functioning as claimed are
disclosed. Appellants assert that there is a difference between
distinguishing between frequencies as in the prior art and
detecting a high and low band with two detectors wherein the two
bands could not both be detected by either one of the individual
detectors [reply brief, page 2].
We will not sustain the examiner’s rejection of these claims
for essentially the reasons argued by appellants in the briefs.
We agree with appellants that there is no motivation to combine
the teachings of Cole and Tokuda because the combination would
defeat the purpose of each. While Cole is designed to detect
wavelengths passed by a bandpass filter, Tokuda is designed to
detect discrete frequencies that are clearly distinguishable from
each other. We do not see how the artisan would have been
motivated to detect adjacent bands of wavelengths in Cole as
claimed based on the detection of unrelated discrete frequencies
as taught by Tokuda. We note that although Cole teaches
detection of a plurality of different bands of wavelength in
Figure 4, Cole still only teaches a single detector for each
8
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