Thank you for expanding on the intial post. Got me to do more reading and rereading of Despain. I'm not convinced that your analysis of first location is accurate. I make reference to your post, specifically to this part and especially the underlined portion.

<our original Claim 29 language accommodates all "predetermined position from the boundary of the instruction group" possibilities when considering the range of instruction types used in microprocessing, but our amended language would seem to be the result of a directive by the USPTO, saying in effect, if the patent is to survive, it will do so only if you align the language with the MICROLOOP instruction type (or any others that use, by default, the first position in the group as the location of the branching), otherwise the Pomerene and Sachs prior art examples will render it unpatentable. >

From the Despain declaration, with emphasis on the underlined portion.

<The disputed claim language refers to the location of an instruction or operand that is being accessed. It requires that the operand or instruction being accessed is "located at a predetermined position from a boundary of said instruction groups." One important aspect of the disagreement between Plaintiffs and Defendants in regard to this term is whether this "predetermined position" should be defined "relative to the beginning or end of the instruction group that includes the operand or instruction being accessed," as Plaintiffs propose, or "in relation to the boundaries of the instruction group in the register," as Defendants propose.>

The way I read this, there are no predetermined positions other than begining or end. And I believe the first location can be either. Also, if you read the amended claim, isn't it odd that it is necessary to decode the instruction or operand to determine the position of the accessed instruction? The accessed instruction is always in the first location. Might defining the predetermined postion mean determining if that accessed instruction or operand is left or right aligned, as there are two possible first locations? That is my interpetation.

Thanks again for continuing this detailed discussion. Look forward to any thoughts you or anyone else has on the above.

Opty