Appeal No. 1998-0746
Application No. 08/511,268
Appellant argues (Brief, pages 6 and 7) that the examiner
is “merely picking and choosing teachings from various prior
art embodiments” based on hindsight knowledge gleaned from
appellant’s invention. We agree. Other than appellant’s
disclosed and claimed invention, the examiner has not produced
any evidence that the skilled artisan would have known to
combine the two embodiments in Figures 2b and 4 of Schmidt to
arrive at the claimed invention. The numerical keys in Figure
2b of Schmidt are intentionally staggered to fit between the
alphabetical keys of the keyboard arrangement (column 8, lines
16 through 21), and the two straight columns of numerical keys
in Figure 4 of Schmidt are specifically separated by four
numeric-related punctuation keys (column 8, line 54 through
column 9, line 2). In Figure 4, the left hand accesses the
low numbers (i.e., 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5), and the right hand
accesses the high numbers (i.e., 6, 7, 8, 9 and 0) (column 8,
lines 64 through 66). The examiner’s rationale falls flat on
its face because Schmidt staggered the numerical keys in
Figure 2b for “ease of use,” and Schmidt specifically located
the punctuation keys between the numerical keys in Figure 4
for the same reason. Based upon such specific teachings in
4
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007