Kato encompasses three designs. The patent examiner uses Ledzius only to point out that it would have been obvious to construct the clock generator and the cpu from the same substrate. Unless I have missed something, that is the only purpose of Ledzius and there is no need to use ledzius for other aspects of the claims.

After reading Kato and Ledzius I believe that even when combined the two cannot be considered prior art since they do not teach
1) "an entire ring oscillator variable speed system clock in said single integrated circuit and connected to said central processing unit for clocking said central processing unit" and
2) a second clock independent of said ring oscillator variable speed system clock connected to said input/output interface.
from claim 1. The key aspect of 1) is that the ring oscillator system clock has to be connected to the processing unit and the key aspect of 2) is that the 2nd clock be independent of the ring oscillator system clock

From Kato, design 1 (figure 1) doesn't even have a ring oscillator so it shouldn't be considered. Figure 4 shows the 2nd design. The last paragraph in col 10 and the first paragraph in col 11 describe that a ring oscillator can be used in place of clock generating circuit 141. From column 4 lines 56 through 63, it is obvious that clock generator 15 and not 141 drives the processing unit (microprocessor). Therefore in Kato, it is the 2nd clock that drives the processing unit and not the ring oscillator. Therefore 1) is not taught by Kato. It is also apaarent from col 8,9,10 and 11 that the the resultant output of clock generating circuit 141 is not used to drive the microprocessor. Instead it is used as a synchronization clock for the voltage detection circuit. So again 1) is not taught. Moreover the 2nd clock is not "independent of said ring oscillator". As can be clearly seen from fig4 and col 8 lines 38 and 39, the clock generated from 141 drives 15. Therefore the 2nd clock is not independent of the ring oscillator in the sense that if 141 stops so does 15. So 2) is not taught by Kato. The 3rd design in figure 7 is comparable to the 2nd design.

Also in Kato since the 2nd clock depends on the ring oscillator when the ring oscillator varies due to environemental changes, it will as well. Therefore it is not a fixed clock.

Since the microprocessor in 336 is not accurately described (ie ring oscillator is not connected to processing unit) and since 2nd clock is neither fixed not independent, none of the rejected claims in the 336 (1-10) are taught by Kato and Ledzius combined.


Hope this helps.

My opinion is that the latest 336 office action is good news in many ways. Since a litigation search was done prior to this latest action being issued, I think we can assume this is the last hurdle for the 336. I believe Moore, who is more familair with his design than I am, will be able to find more discrepancies between kato/ledzius and the 336.

The 749 remains but I remain confident that the claims are strong enough to remain as they are or in a worst case scenario be modified slightly to make the patent more secure.