Appeal No. 2006-3076 Page 5
Application No. 10/004,948
generating and sending information to a drawing program, either internal or external
(Brief, p. 13).
The Examiner maintains that O’Sullivan does teach receiving requirements for a
computer network at [0027] with respect to flow requirements and that the claim
language does not recite an “entire” computer network. We agree with the Examiner and
find that the claim language only states a “computer network” and that the flow
requirements disclosed by O’Sullivan would have been the user needs of the desired
system, wherein the user needs describe specified capabilities and performance
requirements (Answer, p. 7). Appellants provide a definition from Webopedia of
computer network as a group of two or more computers systems linked together (Brief,
p. 13). First, we find no date for the definition, and we do not find that the definition
requires that the end units of the computer system not be previously designated.
Appellants appear to desire that the claim language be interpreted as not having the end
units of the computer system be in existence in the design or plan prior to implementation
(Brief, p. 13). We find this interpretation of the claim language to be overly limited. We
find no express or implied limitation that independent claim 1 requires that the
interconnection fabric and the end units of the computer network be selected in the
determining step. O’Sullivan teaches the determination of the network fabric and the
components and connections therein which are used to meet the flow requirements.
Therefore, Appellants’ argument is not persuasive.
With respect to Appellants’ argument that O’Sullivan does not show generating
and sending information to a drawing program and that the Examiner can’t use what is
generally known about design tools in place of what O’Sullivan expressly teaches (Brief,
p. 13), we agree with Appellants, but find that O’Sullivan teaches the use of a Computer
Aided Design (CAD) tool (O’Sullivan at [0027]) and that it would be used with a
computer system as shown in Figure 1. From our review of Figure 1 and the on-screen
cursor control 107 and the display device 105 and the disclosure in paragraph [0027] that
a “designer is given a set of sources, or host computers; a set of targets, or storage
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