Appeal No. 2006-1816
Application No. 10/386,146
We make reference to the briefs and answer for the
respective positions of Appellants and the Examiner. Only those
arguments actually made by Appellants have been considered in
this decision. Arguments which Appellants could have made but
chose not to make in the briefs have not been considered (37 CFR
§ 41.37(c)(1)(vii)).
OPINION
With respect to the 35 U.S.C. § 112 rejection of the claims, the Examiner
questions the clarity of the second blocking element and finds such limitation to be
misdescriptive since transistor MP5 is merely a shunt transistor and cannot block when
activated (answer, page 3). Appellants argue that it is not necessary that the transistor
MP5 block in all circumstances but its needs to block some of the times in accordance
with the control signal VCDM (brief, page 3). Appellants argue that since transistor MP5
has blocking characteristics, it is not misdescriptive (id.). In response, the Examiner
indicates that the transistor is only a clamping transistor and the only blocking is done
by blocking element D0 (answer, page 6).
Upon a careful review of the claim language and the specification, we find that
although the transistor MP5 is connected as a shunt across the source nodes of the
respective NMOS transistors and gate nodes of PMOS transistors of the transmission
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