Appeal 2007-0843
Application 09/725,393
Lastly, Appellants argue that the Examiner has impermissibly used
hindsight in formulating the rejection (Br. 21).
The Examiner disagrees. The Examiner argues that the cited
combination would have enabled multiple receivers and/or wireless
communications, as taught by Tiedemann (Answer 9).
“[T]he examiner bears the initial burden, on review of the prior art or
on any other ground, of presenting a prima facie case of unpatentability.”
In re Oetiker, 977 F.2d 1443, 1445, 24 USPQ2d 1443, 1444 (Fed. Cir.
1992). The test for obviousness is what the combined teachings of the
references would have suggested to one of ordinary skill in the art. See In re
Kahn, 441 F.3d 977, 987-988, 78 USPQ2d 1329, 1336 (Fed. Cir. 2006); In
re Young, 927 F.2d 588, 591, 18 USPQ2d 1089, 1091 (Fed. Cir. 1991).
We begin our analysis by broadly but reasonably construing the
recited term “puncturing” in a manner consistent with the Specification
(claim 1). “[D]uring examination proceedings, claims are given their
broadest reasonable interpretation consistent with the specification.” In re
Hyatt, 211 F.3d 1367, 1372, 54 USPQ2d 1664, 1667 (Fed. Cir. 2000).
When we look to the Specification for context, we find no support for
Appellants’ argument that “puncturing” requires dropping bits (see Reply
Br. 3). In contrast, the Specification merely discloses puncturing and/or
repeating the channel coded encoder packet to produce an encoder sub-
packet having a size based on a size of the encoder packet and a data
transmission rate at which the encoder sub-packet is to be transmitted
(Specification p. l. l. 32 through p. 2, l. 2). The Specification further
discloses that puncturing and/or repetition techniques are used to obtain
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