Appeal No. 95-4605
Application 08/076,285
dimensions may be left unspecified, contains a direct suggestion
that a parameter such as AutoCAD's repetition number may be
another of these unspecified parameters in a 'generic design
program'" (Examiner's Answer, page 9). We agree. HP-DESIGN
recognized the benefit of variant design, that is, of producing a
variant of a generic design, represented by design commands, by
storing a generic design with design commands having parameters
defined as variables and assigning numerical dimension values to
the parameter variables when creating an actual variant (i.e, at
the time the generic design program is executed). In our
opinion, HP-DESIGN would have suggested to one of ordinary skill
in the art that any design command having parameters that vary in
creating an actual design variant could have been stored in
unexecuted form with its parameters defined as variables which
are assigned values during the creation of the actual variant.
The artisan in the art of designed CAD systems would have had
sufficient skill and experience to recognize that the ARRAY
replication command in AutoCAD could be incorporated as a design
command in other CAD systems such as HP-DESIGN to provide
additional design flexibility. Accordingly, we agree with the
examiner's conclusion that (Examiner's Answer, page 4):
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary
skill in the art at the time of appellant's invention to
create a "generic design program" without a full set of
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