Appeal No. 1998-2725
Application 08/473,651
contrary to a fundamental purpose of Seki. The examiner
interprets the step much more broadly and finds the setting of
flags corresponding to data in Seki as meeting the modifying
step of claims 19 and 20.
Although the examiner is correct to note that these
appealed claims should be given their broadest reasonable
interpretation during prosecution, we do not agree with the
examiner that the modifying step of claims 19 and 20 can be
interpreted in the manner proposed by the examiner. The
modification recited in the appealed claims is to remove data
(the common area of intersection) from the description of the
area covered by said first object. The description of the
area corresponds to the data which identifies the extent of
this area. Thus, the claim recites that a portion of this
identifying data is removed from the second memory, that is, a
lesser area of identifying data remains in this memory.
We agree with appellants that the technique taught by
Seki does not teach or suggest this step. Seki is concerned
with avoiding the problem that original figures cannot be
displayed (restored) after conventional hidden line processing
[column 1, lines 33-36]. Seki overcomes this problem by not
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