Appeal No. 2006-2918
Application 09/844,919
We will sustain the examiner’s rejection of claim 1 as being anticipated
by Allport. We do not agree with appellant’s argument that Allport fails to
disclose a wireless local area network. There is a local area network
between base station unit 75, remote control unit 10, and TV 80 when the
term “local area network” is given its broadest reasonable interpretation.
Since appellant provided no specific definition for this term, the examiner
acted correctly in seeking to find the conventional meaning for the term.
The examiner, therefore, did not err in referring to a standard technical
dictionary to define the term. We agree with the examiner that the base
station, remote control and TV of Allport form a local area network based on
the evidence before us. The connection between base station 75 and the
remote control 10 can be wireless [column 10, lines 9-10]. The connection
between base station 75 and TV 80 is wired or may be wireless (modem
ports) [column 9, line 66-column 10, line 8]. The connection between
remote control 10 and TV 80 is wireless [column 10, lines 36-38]. Since at
least some of the connections between the elements on the network are
wireless, we find that the local area network of Allport can be properly
construed as a wireless local area network. In other words, the term
“wireless local area network” does not require that every connection on the
network be a wireless connection.
We also do not agree with appellant’s argument that there are not a
plurality of user appliances on the local area network of Allport. Allport
indicates that although the invention is described as a “dual display” system,
the invention is equally applicable to a “multiple display” system [column 5,
lines 59-62]. The two displays of the dual display system are the TV 80 and
5
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