Appeal 2007-2127
Reexamination Control No. 90/006,621
interruptible, it would not return control to the main Morse code program as
required for multithreading, but would invoke another interrupt routine;
(3) the interrupt service routine and the Morse code program do not execute
concurrently, because the Morse code program always halts completely until
the interrupt routine is finished; (4) the interrupt service routine and the
Morse code program are not in the same program but are separate programs
at different locations in memory (Finding 19); and (5) the interrupt routine
does not have the other attributes of a thread. The rejection of claims 1-38,
44-47, 50, 57-60, 68-72, 75, and 80-83 over De Jong is reversed.
OBVIOUSNESS
Krantz and Nitta
Issue
The obviousness analysis in the Examiner's Answer only refers to the
teachings of Krantz and Nitta, although the statement of the rejection refers
to four other OS/2 references. We limit the analysis to Krantz and Nitta.
The issue is whether the claimed subject matter would have been
obvious to one skilled in the art at the time of the invention in 1994 under
35 U.S.C. § 103(a) over the combination of Krantz and Nitta.
Principles of law
The four underlying factual inquiries of obviousness are: (1) the scope
and content of the prior art; (2) the differences between the claims and the
prior art; (3) the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art; and (4) secondary
considerations. Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1, 17-18,
148 USPQ 459, 467 (1966).
100
Page: Previous 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 Next
Last modified: September 9, 2013