Appeal No. 97-1353 Page 6
Application No. 07/843,704
purposes of this appeal, it is important to note that the "end
user" is not really the user of the database, but rather the
database designer. Thus, we understand "user" to mean neither
the database application programmer nor the database operator
(Paper No. 1 at 2), but rather an intermediate user who takes
the database application program and customizes it for the
operator to use. This definition is not without difficulties,
including the fact that the programmer, database designer, and
operator may be the same person. We must, however, work from
the administrative record that the Appellants and the examiner
have created.
Having determined that the user is not the application
programmer, but rather the database designer, we must agree
with Appellants that Simonetti neither teaches nor suggests
that some intermediate user is responsible for converting
table 41 into tree 50. Simonetti does not exclude this
possibility, but what was possible is not necessarily what was
obvious. In re Gordon, 733 F.2d 900, 902, 221 USPQ 1125, 1127
(Fed. Cir. 1984). Absent some evidence that a person having
ordinary skill in the art would have had motivation to leave
this conversion step to the database designer, we cannot
sustain a conclusion of obviousness.
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