Appeal No. 2006-2920 Page 16
Application No. 10/813,501
III. We consider next the examiner’s rejection of claims 12-18 as being
anticipated by Asada. Since Appellants’ arguments with respect to this
rejection have treated these claims as a single group which stand or fall
together, we will consider independent claim 12 as the representative claim
for this rejection. See 37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(1)(vii)(2004).
Appellants argue that Asada does not disclose a circuit that is coupled
to disable the transistor responsively to an opposite polarity of the sense
signal [brief, page 8]. Appellants again assert that Asada discloses using a
negative current for enabling transistors 10 and 841 and using a less
negative current for disabling transistors 10 and 841 [id.]. Appellants
conclude that Asada does not meet the language of claim 12 because both
polarities of the current used by Asada are negative [id.].
We note that the examiner restates the same arguments for claim 1
that we have addressed supra. We agree with appellants’ conclusion that
Asada discloses enabling and disabling transistors 10 and 841 in response to
two different values of a negative current, as discussed supra [see brief,
page 7]. Therefore, we will reverse the examiner’s anticipation rejection of
representative claim 12 for essentially the same reasons argued by
appellants in the briefs. We note that appellants have separately argued
dependent claims 19 and 20 [brief, pages 9 and 10]. Because dependent
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