"Could you also comment on what the examiner says on page 30 with respect to independent clock signals and asynchronism?"

He appears to somehow come to the conclusion that the word "independence" could also refer to being physically located elsewhere or different. His confusion appears to stem from the handshaking protocol described in column 17 of the 336 patent and he indicates that the handshaking protocol actually results in the frequency of the fixed clock being modified such that it is synchronous to the ring oscillator. The handshaking protocol described in the 336 does not describe a means of synchronizing the frequency of the external clock with the frequency of the ring oscillator but instead describes how data can be transferred from the clock domain of the external clock to the clock domain of the ring oscillator. Unlike claims 1,2 and 6 claim 10 clearly describes the relationship between the ring oscillator and the external clock by using the phrase "frequency independent of a clock frequency of said oscillator". That phrase should be understood easily by anyone capable of getting a position at the USPTO but that doesn't seem to be the case. On page 15 3rd paragraph, the examiner admits that the 2nd clock in the Kato patent is 1/8th that of the first clock and appears to conveniently ignore the fact that if the frequency of the 1st clock were to change, the frequency of the 2nd clock would too and therefore the frequency of the 2nd clock is dependent on the frequency of the 1st clock. However he claims that here independence refers to the clock frequencies being different.

Line 59 of column 4 of the Kato patent appears to indicate that the 2nd clock is synchronous to the source. Kato uses the word "synchronism" to decribe the relationship. Therefore the examiner can't claim that clock 1 and 2 are asynchronous when Kato himself describes the clocks as synchronous. In the 336 Moore uses the term "synchronized" to refer to the process of transferring the data from the clock domain of the external clock to the clock domain of the ring oscillator, which not only are operating at different frequencies but are also independent of each other.