Appeal 2007-1250
Application 10/458,537
Homere, Administrative Patent Judge, dissenting.
I write separately to voice my disagreement with the majority’s
holding that claims 1 through 24 are not anticipated by Daga. The majority
finds that Daga’s disclosure of the golden timing constraints teaches
Appellants’ generated data file, as recited in claim 1. The majority finds,
however, that Daga’s golden timing constraints do not include all possible
sources of a generated clock within a circuit. Consequently, the majority
decides to reverse the Examiner’s anticipation rejection of the cited claims.
From that decision, I respectfully dissent.
In my view, the minimum requirements of claim 1 are receiving data
and generating a data file. The fact that the generated data file includes all
possible sources of a generated clock included in the circuit carries no
patentable weight. In other words, the informational content of the
generated data file cannot be relied upon to patentably distinguish the claim
over the prior art of record.1 The mere arrangement of facts or data without
any functional interrelationship is not a process, machine, manufacture or
composition of matter.2 Such arrangement of data is known as
1 It is readily apparent to me that Appellants are attempting to patentably
distinguish each claim on appeal on the basis of the nature of the generated
data. Therefore, with respect to all pending claims in the present appeal, the
issue should be whether these claims that differ from the prior art solely as
to “non-functional descriptive material” are not anticipated by Daga under
35 U.S.C. § 102.
2 It should be noted that the two disjointed steps recited in claim 1 perform
no apparent function. There is no indication that the received data and the
6
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Next
Last modified: September 9, 2013