Appeal No. 2002-0662 Page 9
Application No. 09/099,963
that the travel distance to a destination may be comparatively short. A guide route
control unit calculates, when the vehicle is in an off-route condition (i.e., the vehicle is
no longer on the guide route), rectilinear distances from a vehicle position to nodes on
the guide route and route distances from the nodes to the destination along the guide
route. The control unit modifies the rectilinear distances and the route distances using
first and second weighting coefficients, respectively, which are set so that the second
weighting coefficient is greater than the first weighting coefficient, and calculates sums
of the rectilinear and route distances modified with the first and second weighting
coefficients, respectively. The control unit then determines one of the nodes which
exhibits the lowest one of the sums as a return point, and searches for a route from the
vehicle position to the return point. The navigation apparatus guides the vehicle to the
return point along the route thus searched out.
The rejections under 35 U.S.C. § 103
Claims 1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 9 to 11, 13 to 15, 17 to 19 and 21 to 24 stand rejected under
35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over Ayanoglu in view of Fast. In this rejection
(answer, pp. 3-5), the examiner determined that (1) Ayanoglu does not specifically
disclose automatic scaling of the display for the navigation system; and (2) it would
have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time the invention was made
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