Appeal No. 2006-2460 Page 6
Application No. 09/966,620
We consider the examiner’s rejection of claims 1, 16 and 19 as being
unpatentable over the teachings of Philippou in view of Ylonen [answer, page
4]. Since appellants’ arguments with respect to this rejection have treated
these claims as a single group which stand or fall together, we will select
independent claim 1 as the representative claim for this rejection because it
is the broadest independent claim. See 37 C.F.R. § 1.37(c)(1)(vii)(2004).
Appellants argue that the examiner has failed to provide a proper
motivation for modifying the teachings of Philippou with the teachings of
Ylonen that is found in either the references themselves or in the common
knowledge of one of ordinary skill in the art [brief, page 11]. Appellants
acknowledge that Ylonen teaches a method for loading configuration data
into a network device in a reliable manner [brief, page 11; see also Ylonen
col. 2, lines 58-63]. Appellants argue that the examiner’s proffered
motivation for modifying the teachings of Philippou with the teachings of
Ylonen is presented as a general conclusory statement without supporting
evidence [brief, page 11]. Appellants conclude that the examiner has failed
to set forth a proper prima facie case of obviousness [id.].
The examiner disagrees [answer, page 10]. The examiner points out
that Philippou and Ylonen are taken from the same field of endeavor [as the
instant invention], noting that Philippou is related to initializing devices over
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007